Saturday's The Day for Bob Paisley's Memorial Unveiling

For most fans, Saturday 16th August means the start of the new season with the visit to Sunderland being penciled into most diaries ever since the draw was made last June. A group of supporters will however be making the trip to the North East for a completely different. Having worked for the past nine months on the project of building a memorial for the great Bob Paisley at his birth-place of Hetton-le-Hole, next Saturday is when they will be going there to officially unveil this memorial.

A Liverpool Thing: How did this idea come about?
Ian Graves: The Memorial came about after a few members of http://www.onthekop.com/ visited the Bill Shankly memorial in Glenbuck. Its something that we all greatly appreciated so, at our Christmas party just gone we decided to see if there was anything like that for Bob Paisley. By the Monday morning we'd got enough of us together to properly take this on so we used our nouse and contacts to get in touch with the HLH council and the Paisley family. Both parties where quite happy with the idea of us sorting one out so myself and my partner went up there during that Christmas holidays to talk to local people about it. They seemed more than happy for it to go ahead so we launched the appeal. Ian Graves

ALT: What has the response been like?
Peter Etherington: The response has been beyond even our wildest expectations. The amount of just ordinary Liverpool fans and members of the http://www.onthekop.com/ website who have thrown their hard earned cash our way to fund the project has truly touched the committee members. Media response has been brilliant too with air time on the local radio stations and the LFC TV channel covering the project pretty much all the way. Tony Barrett from the Echo has been a big supporter too and we thank him for that.
Ian Graves: To add to Peters very good answer, lets not forget http://www.irishkop.com/ who held a football tournament in bob's honour raising, I think, £1700. Also the lads from Coleraine who raised £600, and all the donations from supporters clubs. And our Jack who climbed Englands highest peak aged only 12 to raise £400? A great thing to do that. There really have been some fantastic things going on with this campaign. The people who attended our fund raiser where absolutely brilliant, as where all the acts who gave of there time to help us. The response has been fantastic, it really has. I get a real buzz when I see someone in one of our T shirts!

ALT: And how has the response in Hetton been like?
Beverley Jervis: The response in Hetton has been nothing less than very enthuiastic. We've been backed all the way by Hetton Council and by members of the Paisley family who still live in the area. Peter Evo We've had donations from local people and local businesses in Hetton who have no links with LFC at all but are just very proud of Bob's achievements.

ALT: Has there been any contact by the club itself?
Beverley Jervis: No we've had no contact from the club itself but LFC TV have been a great support with publicity and they gave us a signed shirt for our fundraiser night raffle. To be honest though, at the start of this campaign we decided we wanted it to be a fans initiative so we didn't feel it necessary to involve the club.

ALT: What about the Paisley familty?
Peter Etherington: Bob's son Graham who lives in Liverpool has been a driving force in the campaign almost from Day 1 and has given invaluable support including access to family photos. Mrs. Paisley also has been enthralled as to us wanting to honour the memory of her late Bob. Nothing has been too much trouble for her and at the moment a scrapbook of the campaign from initial thoughts of the idea right up to the actual unveiling of the memorial is in progress. Bob's brother Hughie who still lives in Hettton has also been a source of inspiration but his own failing health could mean that he will miss the unveiling of their kid's memorial.

ALT: Why is it important to remember club legends like Paisley - and Shankly - in their birthplaces?
Peter Etherington: It is important to FANS that our great legends be remembered in their birthplaces because while the likes of Shanks and Bob ended up being Liverpool through and through and adopted sons of the city real credit for the way they were brought up and the way they conducted themselves in later years must go to the place of their birth. There are not many, if any, people left now in Glenbuck, the birthplace of Shanks but those who live near to the memorial are very proud of Bill and of the memorial itself. The same also is most definitely true of the people of Hetton-le-Hole who are amazed that just an ordinary bunch of fans were willing to go to so much trouble to give them this lasting memorial to one of their most famous, if not the most famous, sons rather than is normally the case of people coming cap in hand looking for the local authorities to give them something.

We knew anyway that Bob was very proud of his birthplace and this was reaffirmed by his family members who very kindly gave us access to photographs that backed this up including photographs of Bob returning to Hetton to show his fellow townspeople the European Cup. One of these photos is now quite famous and depicts Bob sitting with a group of similarly aged friends with the Euroean Cup sitting proudly between them and them treating it as if it was just something that you do everyday, have your photograph taken with probably the greatest trophy in world football. That's how "normal" Bob was and that's how "normal" his friends and fellow townspeople are.

That very photograph, taken in the exact same spot where the memorial will be sited, is now on a very limited edition tshirt we produced, known to us lovingly as "the Paisley owld fellers shirt" and is worn proudly by local councillors in Hetton-le-Hole.

ALT: A club like Liverpool has a number of legends: should more be done to honour them within the city itself?
Peter Etherington: I suppose LFC can only do so much and have gone probably as far as possible in the way they have honoured Bill and Bob. Maybe King Kenny will be similarly honoured in years to come. As for the city itself honouring LFC legends, I think a few Evertonians might have something to say about that! While most Scousers are proud to see statues of John Lennon etc adorning our great city it might not go down too well if Kenny Dalglish was staring out at Evertonians from the middle of Liverpool One. An idea MIGHT be to say have statues of Kenny Dalglish and Alex Young standing side by side. Not sons of the city of course but both great Scots who brought much pleasure to the football fans of the city. Then again, who is to say that statues of Liverpool sons and daughters who have brought great fame to the city in other fields shouldn't be similarly honoured. Would statues of Brian Labone and Jamie Carragher, both great Scousers, be any more worthy than statues of Alan Bleasdale, Elvis Costello, Julie Walters, Arthur Askey or Alan Rudkin? No, let the city do as it does at the moment and if memorials such as the one we have created for Bob are to be built let it be done, as we have done, by fans initiatives and fundraising.

ALT: At what stage of the project are you and by when do you anticipate that it will be ready?
Peter Etherington: I'll answer these questions together rather than as separate entities as they do pretty much roll into each other: Apart from dotting a few i's and crossing a few t's the project is pretty much complete thanks to the massive hard work of the Bob Paisley Memorial Committee and the equally huge cooperation of Hetton-le-Hole council and their Sunderland counteparts and will be ready for unveiling about dinner time on the 16th August, happily just a few hours before Liverpool's first match of the season at Sunderland, just a few miles up the road. All the money needed has been raised. In fact there is a surplus and has always been agreed by the Bob Paisley Memorial Fund committee would go to charities, mainly chosen by the Paisley family. There might just be enough too to get the committee members a bevy or six and well deserved it is too.

Anything planned for afterwards?
Peter Etherington: After the unveiling there will be what we are jokingly referring to as a "prawn sarnie party" for 50 or so invited guests organised by Hetton Council. As this has been a fans initiative however there is no way we would like anybody to feel excluded so to that end we are organising another function in the evening, hopefully after we've started our season with a win, probably in the same place as the "prawn sarnie party" where anybody and everybody is invited. If the numbers don't warrant such a party then we will all head quite happily into Hetton and Houghton-le-Spring (the nearest largeish town) for a good old fashioned booze up.Hetton council have very kindly offered to look after the upkeep of the memorial and I'm sure anybody who wants to visit the memorial either as a passing visit or as part of a trip when we are up in the North-East playing Sunderland, Newcastle or Middlesbrough will give it a clean up and a tidy round if needed.

Glynn Jones: People outside of our commitee would not believe how difficult this project has been at times. In the 9 months that it has taken for the project to come to fruition there have been more than a few stressful moments but I can say hand on heart that it has been totally worth it, in fact i'm a bit sorry that it is now coming to an end. There's nothing else in the pipeline at this stage but you just never know what's around the corner.

For more information about the Bob Paisley Memorial Fund, go to: http://bobpaisleymemorial.homestead.com/