He would have been so chuffed (From Bournemouth Echo)

He would have been so chuffed

8:20pm Thursday 29th July 2010 in

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Samuel Oldridge would have been pleased as Punch to know what his school friends had achieved in his memory.

The remarkable young Poole boy, who packed such a lot into his eight years of life, has inspired youngsters from his two schools to raise funds for his chosen cancer charity.

“He was such a wonderful little chap,” said his dad John. “He would be chuffed to bits. If he was alive he would be volunteering to do the bits and bobs anyway. That was Samuel.”

The younger son of John, a police officer, and Jacquie, a GP, the plucky Lilliput lad, who lost his sight due to a brain tumour before he went to school, died in April 2009.

In the last 12 months his schools, Lilliput First and Baden-Powell and St Peter’s Middle, have raised thousands of pounds in his name and his family has donated matching silver cups to both schools to reward outstanding pupils.

Among his many talents, Samuel mastered Korean martial art taekwondo and was awarded an honorary first-degree black belt shortly before he died.

The Samuel Oldridge 5 Tenets Trophy will be awarded yearly to pupils who demonstrate taekwondo’s rules of courtesy, integrity, perseverance, self-control and indomitable spirit, which depicted the youngster’s approach to life.

A musical lad who enjoyed swimming and loved waterslides, cycling and horse riding, he mastered Braille and the clicking echolocation skill of navigation and starred in a documentary on Five in 2008.

At Lilliput’s end-of-year service at Holy Angels Church, Martin Hussey, his paediatric consultant at Poole Hospital, received a cheque for £3,708.66 for Poole and District Children’s Cancer Fund.

Lilliput youngsters raised £500 to support Michael Peters, a Baden-Powell teacher who ran the London Marathon in the youngster’s memory, and a range of sponsorship and events raised the remainder.

His brother Nick, 12, has raised funds for the charity, adding to the thousands of pounds made so far to help local youngsters with cancer.

During a five-year illness Samuel underwent a total of 35 major operations, courses of chemotherapy and radiotherapy and was so clued up on his condition, optic glioma, that he was a case study for national neurosurgeon exams.

“He coped with incredible bravery, maturity and humour that humbled us all,” said John.