“A NURSE took me into a room and told me ‘You can’t do anything for him, the best thing you can do is go home and forget him’.”

Being told her husband was dying and that she should just move on was the most devastating time for Mary Butterwick, a situation which left her angry and tested her faith to the limit.

But it was that day she believed was instrumental in transforming the idea of creating Butterwick Hospice into a reality.

Speaking in 2011 when Mary’s biography Every Moment Counts was published, she recalls how she’d had a plan to create place of care and support for people with life-limiting illnesses.

Undeterred by a lack of belief among the people around her, she sold her home and ploughed all her savings into the project and bought 10 Hartburn Lane, in Hartburn, Stockton.

The John Butterwick Day Care Centre opened in 1984 and was such a success she had to transform areas set aside for her living accommodation into more rooms for patients.

The beginning was never easy, often resulting in Mary sleeping on a camp bed in a room without heating and cracks in the windows, but she never once complained.

The way she stretched her money, she sometimes felt she was going back to make-do-and-mend years of the war.

However, no-one went hungry and she managed to provide treats of homemade cakes and scones every day.

After receiving charity status, it was renamed the Butterwick Trust and moved to a former convent in Bishopton Road, Stockton.

It was shortly after this that Mary was honoured with the Freedom of the Borough by Stockton Borough Council, having also received an honorary degree from Teesside University, for the work she had done.

It was then only after reading a newspaper cutting that a very humble Mary began to realise how much of a difference she had made.

She admitted that for the first seven years the hospice had been a lonely life, but her driving force had always been the patients and the care they needed.

In a speech at Stockton Town Hall, she thanked the community for their support, and said: “It is not our hospice, it is your hospice. It belongs to the people of this borough of Stockton and its surrounding community.

“In this way, you care for me as I care for you. Butterwick Hospice has done a lot for health care in our society, and I am thankful indeed; very thankful to each one who, over the years, has been involved, for their love and support.”

The Bishopton Road site became too big for its premises, so a £1.2m purpose-built centre opened on July 22, 1997, next to what is now the University Hospital of North Tees.

Since then, the hospice has expanded to cater for children and also opened a site in Bishop Auckland.

“The move was a massive step,” she said. “One I never imagined would happen. John would have been gobsmacked. He was quite a laid-back man, although when I think what I have done, I am quite shocked.

“The hospice was never in my plans in life, but things change. I believe I was asked to do this. It all came quite naturally.

“I couldn’t have done it without the community and my faith.”

Mary was a regular visitor to her hospices right up until her death. She knew what she had created has brought comfort to thousands of families in the North-East and she felt safe in the knowledge it will continue to do so for many years to come.

She loved to meet those attending the centres and also get involved in activities. She was renowned among staff for instantly brightening the place from the moment she arrived until the second she left.

Mary added: “The hospice has a great future ahead of it and I am privileged to be a part of it.”