Francelle Bradford White awarded a BEM

One of our directors, Francelle Bradford White, has been awarded a British Empire Medal (BEM) in the Queen’s New Year’s Honours List! The award is in recognition of her voluntary and charitable work across numerous sectors.

Francelle has raised funds and volunteered for many charitable causes for most of her adult life. She has carried out extensive fundraising efforts for the Foundation for the Study of Infant Deaths (now the Lullaby Trust) and also been involved with Childline, Whizz-Kidz, the British Red Cross, the Alzheimer’s Society and Dementia UK. She has raised hundreds of thousands of pounds for these causes over the course of her involvement with them.

Francelle has also volunteered extensively with the British criminal justice system. She has long been an independent custody visitor overseeing the way police treat people held in custody in local police stations. She was ultimately appointed by the Home Office to the Independent Monitoring Board at one of the UK’s largest prisons.

Six years ago, Francelle founded the Andrée Grioterray White Charitable Trust. The charity, founded in her mother’s name, is dedicated to funding research into any form of Alzheimer’s disease or dementia and to provide support to those suffering from it. Andrée was a director of Gander & White, having married our founder, Frank White, and taking over the company following his death.

In 2014 Francelle wrote Andrée’s War, which was published by Elliott & Thompson. The book is based on Francelle’s mother’s wartime diaries, charting Andrée’s time working as a courier throughout occupied France in the French Resistance during World War Two. All net income from book sales and all author and speaker fees Francelle receives are donated to the Andrée Grioterray White Charitable Trust. Francelle hopes to sell the film rights to the book.

Francelle has been a director of Gander & White since the early 1970s, joining the company founded by her father in 1933 and run from the mid-60s by her mother, Andrée, until Patrick White, Francelle’s brother, took up the reins. She continues to be a director today.

“I am honoured to receive a BEM in the 2020 New Year’s Honours List” Francelle said. “It feels quite fitting that this honour has been awarded at the start of the year that would have marked my mother’s 100^th birthday and I am proud to have used her amazing war time story to raise money to fight a very cruel disease.”