Captain Tom Moore

Captain Sir Thomas Moore (30 April 1920 – 2 February 2021), more popularly known as Captain Tom, was a British Army officer and fundraiser.

Moore was born in Keighley, West Riding of Yorkshire, England, on 30 April 1920, and grew up in the town.

He was the son of Isabella (née Hird) and Wilson "Wilfred" Moore.

His father was from a family of builders, and his mother was a head teacher.

Moore was educated at Keighley Grammar School and started an apprenticeship in civil engineering.

Moore was a member of the Keighley and District Photographic Association between 1934 and 1936, as his father had also been.

Moore was conscripted in the 8th Battalion, Duke of Wellington's Regiment (8 DWR) in June 1940, stationed at Weston Park in Otley, nine months after the beginning of the Second World War.

He was selected for officer training later that year, and attended an Officer Cadet Training Unit before being commissioned as a second lieutenant on 28 June 1941.

On 22 October 1941, Moore became a member of the Royal Armoured Corps.

He was promoted to war-substantive lieutenant on 1 October 1942 and to temporary captain on 11 October 1944.

As part of the Fourteenth Army, the so-called "Forgotten Army", he served in Arakan in western Burma (now Myanmar) – where he survived dengue fever.

Moore returned to the UK in February 1945, to take a training course on the inner workings of the Churchill tanks, learning to become an instructor.

He did not return to the regiment, remaining as an instructor and the Technical Adjutant of the Armoured Vehicle Fighting School in Bovington Camp, Dorset until the end of the War.

He was demobilised in 1946.

Moore was officially demobilised in October 1946.

After leaving the army at 26 years old, he joined the family building company, the name of which was altered to W. Moore & Son (Builders) Ltd. In 1960 he took a job as a travelling salesman for a roofing materials company called Nuralite in Gravesend, Kent.

Seven years later he became regional manager, for the north of England and Northern Ireland, for the company.

He was later appointed general manager of Cawoods Concrete Products Ltd., manufacturing concrete pipes in March, Cambridgeshire, with a view to restoring it to profitability or closing it down, after its owners had failed to find a buyer.

For 65 years, Moore organised the annual reunion for the 9th Battalion veterans.

Moore led a management buyout in 1983, with the assistance of local Member of Parliament Clement Freud, who also became an investor in the renamed March Concrete Products Ltd.

The company traded successfully for several years until market conditions and technical issues forced the investors to sell it to Amalgamated Roadstone Corporation in 1987.

Moore raced motorcycles competitively – he purchased his first when he was 12 and wore the number 23.

He rode a Scott motorcycle, winning several trophies.

On the morning of Moore's 100th birthday, the total raised by his walk passed £30 million, and by the time the campaign closed at the end of that day had increased to over £32.79 million (worth almost £39 million with expected tax rebates).

His birthday was marked in a number of ways, including flypasts by the Royal Air Force and the British Army.

He received over 150,000 cards, and was appointed as honorary colonel of the Army Foundation College.

This was because 8 DWR became an armoured unit designated as the 145th Regiment Royal Armoured Corps.

Later that year, he was transferred to the 9th Battalion (9 DWR) in India, which had converted to become the 146th Regiment Royal Armoured Corps.

While in India, he was tasked with setting up and running a training programme for army motorcyclists.

He was initially posted to Bombay (now Mumbai) and subsequently to Calcutta (now Kolkata).

He made international headlines in April 2020 when he raised money for charity in the run-up to his 100th birthday during the COVID-19 pandemic.

He served in India and the Burma campaign during the Second World War, and later became an instructor in armoured warfare.

After the war, he worked as managing director of a concrete company and was an avid motorcycle racer.

On 6 April 2020, at the age of 99 during the first COVID-19 national lockdown, Moore began to walk 100 lengths of his garden in aid of NHS Charities Together, with the goal of raising £1,000 by his 100th birthday on 30 April.

In the 24-day course of his fundraising, he made many media appearances and became a household name in the UK, earning a number of accolades and attracting over 1.5 million individual donations.

In recognition of his efforts, he received the BBC Sports Personality of the Year Helen Rollason Award at the 2020 ceremony.

He performed in a cover version of the song "You'll Never Walk Alone" sung by Michael Ball, with proceeds going to the same charity.

The single topped the UK Singles Chart, making him the oldest person to achieve a UK number one.

On 17 July 2020, he was personally knighted by Queen Elizabeth II at Windsor Castle.

He died in 2021 aged 100, at Bedford Hospital, where he was taken after being treated for pneumonia and then testing positive for COVID-19.