A woman who was crowned the UK’s longest-serving physiotherapist after working until she was 93 has gifted the bulk of a £2million legacy to Aberdeen University.
Sheila Ferres MBE dedicated her life to helping others and continued to work until she passed away this year.
Mrs Ferres and her husband, Dr Gordon Ferres, had close links to the university with her husband graduating in 1927.
It has now emerged Mrs Ferres, who died in January, left an estate worth £1,993,137 with most of it being gifted to the city’s institution.
She ordered around £1.2m be used to set up a fund in her husband’s name at the university’s institute of medical science and one in her name at the university’s bone research programme.
Born in Yorkshire in 1923, she left school at 17 to train in massage and medical gymnastics – a forerunner of modern day physiotherapy.
She helped treat forces personnel who had suffered injuries during Word War II before moving to South Africa.
After returning to the UK, she set up a practice in Wales where she met Dr Ferres. They married in 1953 when she was 30 and he was 65 and the couple settled in Banchory where Dr Ferres lived to be 100.
Widowed in 1993, MrsFerres was made an MBE in 1999. She continued to work as a physio where her clients included marathon runners, North Sea helicopter pilots, and the Royal household at Balmoral.
Aged 93, she still working full-time, rising at 5am and retiring every night pondering the same question her parents posed to her – what had she done for someone else that day.
Mrs Ferres captured her life in her memoirs, A Life of Giving, and told how she shook off contracting polio when she was younger.
She said: I knew there was no point in wasting time and energy by being upset about the polio.
“The fact was, it had happened and my job was to make the best of it. In many ways it became an education because I learnt so much trying to recover and I was then able to use this experience later for the benefit of my patients.”
Professor Steve Heys, head of the school of Medicine, Medical Sciences & Nutrition, at Aberdeen, hailed Mrs Ferres’ generosity.
He said: “Sheila Ferres MBE was a truly inspirational figure and a long-time supporter of the university, and we are incredibly grateful for this significant donation that will help fund our world-leading medical research.”