About Sue's House
Sue Quirk was a poet, an artist but above all, she was a beautiful person - very much beloved by all who knew her, especially her children Lucy and Rebecca and her husband Terry. When she died, became the inspiration for the PEACE Support Group in Ilford where she had lived.
The PEACE Support Group was based on a loving and infinitely supportive concern for others and it is this, above anything else, which helps people to heal.
How did that love and concern express itself in Ilford? Well, the place was Terry's front room in Meath Road; every Wednesday evening it felt like a cavern of light filled with people gathered around the fire. On visiting Terry and Erica, his new partner, on other occasions, it was amazing to see the real size of the room, and the ordinariness of the fireplace. But then one has to ask which perception was the more real. For love has the power to transform perception not only of a room and its furniture, but of cancer and of the one suffering from cancer. And this is what was going on in that expanded room; cancer was perceived as an opportunity and the sufferer as a human being of infinite value, no longer the helpless victim of a vile scourge.
Now we have moved on and no longer meet at Terry's; cavernous as the room may have seemed, it was in fact bursting at the seams, and anyway it was only available once a week. The vision was born of a home-from-home for the group - somewhere the members could call their own with an ever-open door.
So a charitable trust was founded, called the North East London Cancer Support Group, with Terry as Chairman and Frank Longcroft as Trustee and Group Administrator, and a sum of over £30,000 raised. Then Frank did some hardworking research which produced a short list of three houses for Terry and acting counsellor Katherina to inspect.
So it was that 10 Dawlish Drive, Ilford, became Sue's House. The dream had come true. It was opened on a Wednesday evening, August 23rd, 1984.