A DISABLED woman who became one of Churchill Hospital’s longest-serving employees has died aged 84.

Betty Green received the British Empire Medal for her service to the Oxford hospital.

She was presented with the accolade in 1991 by the then Lord Lieutenant of Oxfordshire Sir Ashley Posonby.

She was paralysed from the waist down and confined to a wheelchair in 1947 when she was 16.

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After 44 years at the hospital, retiring in 1997, Miss Green said: “Being in a wheelchair has not held me back.

“It took me a bit longer to get around but the job was marvellous, I didn’t want to leave.”

Betty Irene Green was born in St Ebbe’s on September 9, 1930, to parents Ada and Alfred, a railway weighbridge worker.

She had four siblings, Alfred, Violet, Margery and Constance, and went to St Ebbe’s CoE Primary School and then St Aldate’s School.

She took a job at the Electra Palace, in Queen Street, selling ice cream, chocolates and collecting twopence entry fees.

But at 16 she woke up one morning after an evening at the Regal Cinema in Cowley and could not feel her legs.

Doctors said Miss Green had transverse myelitis, a rare neurological disorder that affects the central nervous system and specifically the spinal cord.

Miss Green had to stay in hospital for two to three months. Her mother was told she would likely never walk again.

But a family aunt was a matron and said Stoke Mandeville Hospital – set up for servicemen with spinal cord injuries – was taking its first civilians. Miss Green received physiotherapy there for 18 months.

At the hospital there was a programme to turn ex-servicemen into draughtsmen. Miss Green was one of just three women accepted on to the course.

She was sent to Ronkswood Hospital and St John’s College in Worcestershire for training.

When Miss Green was discharged she returned to her family in Headington, Oxford. She began work at the Ministry of Works office at the Churchill Hospital and became an NHS admissions clerk.

She rose through the hospital ranks to become secretary to the head of the pharmacy and her career there lasted 44 years, until she retired in 1997.

She retired later than she was entitled to, so she could finish work at the same time as her sister Constance, known as Connie, who worked at The Mitre, in High Street.

An active member of a disabled drivers’ association, Miss Green travelled with them for holidays around the UK over the years.

Her sister Connie said: “When she left hospital in 1947 she was told she would be crippled for the rest of her life. But Betty went out and made a life anyway.”

Miss Green passed away at home on November 23. A funeral took place at Oxford Crematorium on December 9.

She is survived by her sister Connie.

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