Mother of 7/7 victim: ‘Miriam was the greatest gift we had’
Mavis Hyman, 87, who set up the Miriam Hyman Memorial Trust, is named the recipient of Jewish Care's Topland Business Luncheon Award
Francine Wolfisz is the Features Editor for Jewish News.
A woman whose daughter was murdered in the 7/7 bombings today reiterated her promise to “turn things round and do whatever we can to redress the negative.”
Mavis Hyman, 87, has devoted herself since the tragedy to charitable projects set up in memory of her 31-year-old daughter, Miriam, who was killed in the Tavistock Square bus explosion in 2005.
Named as this year’s recipient of Jewish Care’s Topland Business Luncheon Award, Mrs Hyman, who established the Miriam Hyman Memorial Trust, described the honour as “very precious and deeply moving”.
Speaking of her daughter, she said: “Miriam was the greatest gift that we had and we lost her in an act of senseless brutality.
“This was hard, so the only way we could really cope with it was to try and turn things round.”
Alongside her husband, John, daughter Esther and Miriam’s friends, she set up the Miriam Hyman Children’s Eye Care Centre in Orissa, India, close to where Mrs Hyman was born.
The centre helps treat children who need eye care services, including those unable to pay.
Alongside this, the charity has also developed a curriculum-based resource for secondary schools students, in an effort to promote tolerance and prevent extremism.
Speaking to a 700-strong audience, Mrs Hyman said: “If you want to make a man, then you really need to be able to nurture this maturity and the place to start is the family and then the school.
“We hope to find a pathway to encourage children to act rationally in the face of adversity and use Miriam’s story as a guide to how others have done it. The young people are finding this very inspirational and we are feeling encouraged.”
She added: “If we can just appreciate each other’s culture, instead of being afraid of it and putting up barriers, then we have hope of a more cohesive society.”
The event, held at Grosvenor House Hotel, in Park Lane, on Wednesday, helped raise £250,000 for Jewish Care’s Helpline and community support services.
Following the award presentation James Harding, director of BBC News, interviewed Laura Kuenssberg, BBC political editor and Newsnight presenter about her life in the Commons, her take on Brexit and the recent slew of MP sexual harassment allegations.
Of the latter, she described Westminster as “a strange place, full of people with ambition and loyalty and people who care about the party and about their careers.”
She said: “It’s clear to me that young staff – women and men -have had to put up with harassment in all different ways.
“It’s been very difficult to get a handle on the actual scale of what’s going on, because people haven’t wanted to come forward.
“I think the biggest change we are seeing is a generational thing, of what people think was once appropriate and what is appropriate now.”
Thank you for helping to make Jewish News the leading source of news and opinion for the UK Jewish community. Today we're asking for your invaluable help to continue putting our community first in everything we do.
For as little as £5 a month you can help sustain the vital work we do in celebrating and standing up for Jewish life in Britain.
Jewish News holds our community together and keeps us connected. Like a synagogue, it’s where people turn to feel part of something bigger. It also proudly shows the rest of Britain the vibrancy and rich culture of modern Jewish life.
You can make a quick and easy one-off or monthly contribution of £5, £10, £20 or any other sum you’re comfortable with.
100% of your donation will help us continue celebrating our community, in all its dynamic diversity...
Engaging
Being a community platform means so much more than producing a newspaper and website. One of our proudest roles is media partnering with our invaluable charities to amplify the outstanding work they do to help us all.
Celebrating
There’s no shortage of oys in the world but Jewish News takes every opportunity to celebrate the joys too, through projects like Night of Heroes, 40 Under 40 and other compelling countdowns that make the community kvell with pride.
Pioneering
In the first collaboration between media outlets from different faiths, Jewish News worked with British Muslim TV and Church Times to produce a list of young activists leading the way on interfaith understanding.
Campaigning
Royal Mail issued a stamp honouring Holocaust hero Sir Nicholas Winton after a Jewish News campaign attracted more than 100,000 backers. Jewish Newsalso produces special editions of the paper highlighting pressing issues including mental health and Holocaust remembrance.
Easy access
In an age when news is readily accessible, Jewish News provides high-quality content free online and offline, removing any financial barriers to connecting people.
Voice of our community to wider society
The Jewish News team regularly appears on TV, radio and on the pages of the national press to comment on stories about the Jewish community. Easy access to the paper on the streets of London also means Jewish News provides an invaluable window into the community for the country at large.
We hope you agree all this is worth preserving.
