Chinn and crew on flight to aid charity
Historian Carl Chinn and two Black Country firemen are flying to Ecuador this month to help raise thousands of pounds for a cancer charity set up in memory of the skipper of the 1966 World Cup-winning side.
The Bobby Moore Fund raises money through expeditions to various parts of the globe and on February 28, almost 16 years to the day after the England footballing hero died from bowel cancer, Carl will join Walsall firefighters Rudy Parkes and Andy Grosvenor on the trip.
Although the Express & Star columnist regularly raises £20,000 a year for a range of charities, this venture has been inspired by a personal sadness as his uncle has been diagnosed with terminal bowel cancer.
"If it had been caught in time, he would survive, but it wasn't," says aged Carl, aged 52, who spoke to Bobby Moore's widow Stephanie about the fund she set up following his death in 1993.
Although the disease is the second biggest killer of young men in this country, it is also one of most curable of all cancers if caught early enough. More than 80 per cent of lives could be saved if the disease is diagnosed and treated in time.
Carl continues: "I got quite emotional on the phone as I was nine in 1966 when we won the World Cup and it was such a fantastic thing, so to speak to Steph was wonderful. With my uncle's illness it has given the trip a real poignancy."
The Spanish-speaking Birmingham University professor also has an interest in the history of the region and its people and, in addition to his navvying skills, he will act as a translator for the group. He studied the language for five years as a pupil at Moseley Grammar School in Birmingham, gaining an A-level in the subject. He says: "I try and practise it every year when we go on holiday but it gets harder to remember."
His friend Rudy Parkes is a veteran of charity missions. The 49-year-old watch commander, who grew up in the same road as Duncan Edwards on the Priory estate in Dudley, travelled to Brazil in September and South Africa in October for the Bobby Moore Fund.
This will be his fifth trip following the death in 2000 from cancer of his uncle, Alf Pickrill. Both Carl and 45-year-old Walsall operations commander Andy have accompanied him on visits to the orphanage. "It was a filthy hell-hole of a place, this trip should be a lot different," says Carl. The trio, who each have to raise £4,500, will be helping to rebuild a school in the isolated community of El Pedregal.
* Anyone wishing to donate to the charity can send a cheque made out to The Bobby Moore Fund to Carl Chinn c/o the Express & Star, 51-53 Queen Street, Wolverhampton WV1 1ES.
