I thank God that every so often I come across a person that most would condemn as being eccentric, a bit of a weirdo, somebody to be laughed at. I first came across John Burkhill when we were on holiday in Yorkshire last summer, he featured on the Yorkshire Television magazine show Calendar and at eighty-four he was being heralded as Mr Sheffield and was being praised for raising nearly a million pounds single handedly for the Cancer charity McMillan Cancer Care.
John Burkhill possibly would qualify as being a bit of an eccentric, he wears his McMillan shirt, his green afro wig and his green short and walks miles around Sheffield, pushing his pram whatever the weather. I was struck by something a man said about “Pram Man” Sheffield is a city divided by two football teams, as with several cities you are either red or blue, Sheffield United, or Sheffield Wednesday and the man in the street said the John Burkhill, Pram Man was welcomed in both stadiums.
What I find fascinating is what motivates an eighty-four-year-old man to get up every morning and walk the streets raising money? Researching this eccentric man when I got home, I discovered that John’s wife June died after a battle with cancer in 1992, a year after their daughter Karen had died.
Grief affects people in many different ways for John, his response to losing his wife and daughter was to work hard to try to help others who are living with cancer. Consequently, John had devoted thirty years of his life to working tirelessly to help others. My guess is that anybody seeing John out walking and not knowing his story would possibly just label him a bit weird.
Having read a bit of John Burkhill’s story, I think that he is exactly the kind of person God would choose to be a part of his team.