Empire medal for woman raised in West Side

A woman who was born and raised in Shetland’s West Side has been presented with a British Empire Medal for services to her community.

Christina Margaret Ann Groundwater (née Anderson), known as Margaret, was born in Reawick in 1933.

She left school at 14 with aspirations of becoming a nurse. However, being the oldest of seven children, she did not have that opportunity.

Instead Margaret chose to pursue her caring nature through other methods and spent her whole working life helping people.

When she was 17 Margaret moved to Orkney where she worked in care for over 50 years. Her services to the community of Orphir includes time spent working firstly as a home help and then as a home carer.

Caring

Margaret remained in work until a couple of weeks prior to her 80th birthday, taking only a two-year break to care for her husband Tony.

Following his death Margaret was asked to become part of the home care team again. Working for her home care clients led her into doing many jobs for them such as spring cleaning, doing their shopping or taking them shopping, laundry and gardening.

When one of her clients went into hospital Margaret invited her husband to come to her house for dinner. For the next 20 years he joined the family for his evening meal.

Outwith her homecare duties she was called on several times to work privately to help people up in the morning, provide personal care and help them to bed.

When her clients moved on to residential care she remained a faithful visitor to them. As well as her caring work she was the caretaker at the local community centre for over 20 years.

She was on the kirk board for a long time, retiring from this only recently and also enjoyed many years of being the school dinner lady at Orphir school.

Margaret is known for her commitment, for enjoying her working life and for never once complaining about doing any of the tasks asked of her.