Catherine Ann Affleck

As a child, our mother was inspired to be a nurse by the story of Florence Nightingale’s first patient, Cap the sheepdog, in her favourite history book, which she shared with us as children.

She studied in Portsmouth and then trained at the Royal Free in London. She worked as a hospital nurse, travelled around the world and had three children. Catherine later discovered her greatest vocational satisfaction was as a district nurse, visiting and caring for patients in their homes in north Hampshire. Her career spanned the 1960s, 70s, 80s, 90s and she retired in the 2000s.

Nursing, for Catherine, was never a job, it was always her vocation and Florence Nightingale was her inspiration.