Romford Woman Raises £2K for Charity In Memory Of Her Dad Who Lost His Sight.

A Romford woman has helped to raise nearly £2,000 for a charity which supports people with the leading cause of blindness, in memory of her late father.

Maria Johnston, 53, set up an online tributes page after her dad Sidney Hartman passed away in October 2024. It has received £1,851.86, which has been donated to national sight loss charity, the Macular Society.

Sidney, who was 83, had a condition called wet age-related macular degeneration (AMD) in his later years, which left him with poor central vision, despite having eye injections to help slow his sight loss down.

Remembering Sidney, his daughter Maria said: “He was always a very kind man and always working. He worked in the print trade so his eyesight had always been very important. My nan – his mum – also had this disease years before so it’s something he was aware of before he was actually diagnosed.

“And he was really, really loved by so many people which showed at the funeral. It was a sad day but I got to see so much love that day.”

It was while making the funeral arrangements that the idea of raising money for the Macular Society was put forward.

“People have been very, very generous,” said Maria. “I wanted to do it because it would be a nice way to mark a memory of my dad. He would want to help people who were suffering with losing their eyesight, like he was. It just felt right to set the page up, especially it feels like more people need to know about macular disease. I hope the more people that know about the Macular Society, the more support they can get.”

The charity runs many different support services across the UK from counselling, a dedicated helpline to support groups. It also funds research in the fight to find a cure for macular disease which is the biggest cause of sight loss in the UK. Nearly 1.5 million people are currently affected, many more are at risk and the disease can have a devastating effect on people’s lives, leaving them unable to drive, read or see faces.

“It didn’t put him off going to America and visiting my brother, and he was still doing bits of work where he could like printing business cards for people. He was still trying to carry on,” Maria explained.

“He could still see but not clearly and that was frustrating for him. He wasn’t able to drive, and it was sad because he’d had a lot of anxieties about driving alone through his life. He was getting more confident later on but then he couldn’t see as well as he used to.

“He just found everything less clear. He loved watching football but he had to sit quite close to the TV and he explained it like a shadow over part of his eye. Some days it was better than others.”

Maria, an accountant, is now hoping to raise more awareness of macular disease and hopes more focus on research can one day lead to a cure.

She said: “I think for dad it was a very scary process for him to not be able to see his grandchildren and to think he might get to a point where his useful sight would be gone completely. Knowing that, it makes me worried about the disease and whether I am likely to be prone to it.

“I want to see more research, you have to believe in a cure. It would even help if we could detect it early enough, maybe even prevent this disease from getting worse for people.

“I think there are still so many questions about underlying factors, what are we doing that causes it, and if it’s in your family you want to know if something can be done down the line, to help treat or even eradicate it, so people don’t have to go through what my dad went through.”

Many people affected by macular disease describe losing their sight as being similar to bereavement. There is still no cure and most types of the disease are not treatable. Age-related macular degeneration (AMD) is the most common form of macular disease, affecting more than 700,000 people, usually over the age of 50. 

For more information about the other services available from the Macular Society please call 0300 3030 111 or email help@macularsociety.org

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