HEARTFELT tributes were paid to Val Waterhouse, the former chairman of North East Lincolnshire's Care Plus Group, at an emotional memorial service yesterday.
Friends, family and colleagues gathered at Grimsby Town Hall to share their memories of the 62-year-old who died in July, after a two-year battle with cancer.
Some even donned outlandish footwear to support the Funny Feet campaign aiming to raise awareness of gynaecological cancers in her memory.
After the service, her family released six white doves outside the town hall in her memory, while people were invited to share their memories of Val on a "tree of life".
Despite being diagnosed with cancer just a day before she took on the Care Plus Group's lead role in 2011, Val continued throughout her illness to lead her team with the same determination she brought to her previous roles, which included driving the Primary Care Trust into the unique Care Trust Plus..
She also enjoyed a successful career in business as managing director of ICF Grimsby Ltd, winning the National Businesswoman Of The Year Award in 1991.
Leading the tributes yesterday, Lance Gardner, chief executive of the North East Lincolnshire Care Plus Group, said: "It was my privilege and honour to work with Val for nearly ten years. I'll always be grateful to Val because she didn't tell me off enough!"
He recalled the support Val gave him when he and a colleague defied the CTP board by making a secret bid for funding for a community hospital, adding poignantly that the facility had opened on Strand Street just weeks after he death.
Chris Long, area director for NHS England North Yorkshire and Humberside, recalled Val's "wicked sense of humour" and described her as an "iconoclast" who left her staff feeling "empowered and enabled to do things".
Tony Hunter, chief executive of North East Lincolnshire Council, said: "She always wore her authority lightly. She carried great gravitas, but never did it in a way that made another person feel small."
Mark Webb, chairman of the North East Lincolnshire Clinical Commissioning Group as a "tenacious" woman who "never minced her words" and would leave "a big space" in many people's lives. Val's son Andrew, who worked alongside her at ICF, said: "Mum's passion wasn't turnover or profit. It was people. She was a people person and that is the reason I will miss her so much."
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