NWR would like to express its heartfelt condolences to Antoinette’s family and friends.
Our thoughts also go out to members, not just her local group, but those who have met her over the years who will be feeling the loss of a good friend who passed away suddenly on 14 August 2024.
Antoinette was a pivotal member of NHR (now NWR) after joining in 1974, and had been both a local and national organiser and more recently the winner of the Mary Stott Award in 2019. Antoinette celebrated 50 years as a member this year.
Antoinette became an enthusiastic and committed member of what was NHR after the birth of her first baby in 1974. By 1977 the family relocated to Plymouth, and eighteen months later to Solihull. She returned to Amersham in 1988 and remained a member of Amersham North NWR group.
On election to the National Group in 1980, when a member of Solihull NHR group, Antoinette became the official Archivist sorting out and collating the archive material of NHR’s first 20 years. She subsequently became Conference Liaison Officer communicating with groups not only in the West Midlands, but across the country.
In 1981 Antoinette became NHR National Organiser. Antoinette worked tirelessly, demonstrating exceptional leadership and organisational skills to keep a National Group of 12 members across the country working effectively and harmoniously together. She established the first official NHR office in Solihull.
Antoinette was also the public face of NHR, promoting its aims on the radio, representing NHR at numerous prestigious events and even meeting Princess Margaret! She was always busy travelling around the country meeting local groups and attending National Group meetings, besides maintaining a regular attendance at her local group.
Reflection of Antionette’s life provided by her husband
Mary Agnes Antoinette Ferraro, née Condon, known as Antoinette
11/02/1947 to 14/08/2024
Antoinette was born in Wimbledon into a middle class Catholic Irish family. Even by the standards of the time, and certainly by today’s, it was a narrow, almost cloistered, environment, perhaps reflecting her parents ages; her father was almost 51 and her mother almost 44. Her only brother, Ian, 13 years older, was away at school, then trained to be a Benedictine monk and a priest.
Her parents had almost no books in the house. As a child she wasn’t allowed to borrow books from the local library in case they were infected. Or to go to a swimming pool for the same reason. She had to avert her eyes on the way to junior school when passing a home for unmarried mothers. Her mother would never have countenanced being treated by a coloured nurse; there was no ill-will in that, purely ignorance. And in later years ‘Toinette was even told that her fiancé stirred his tea the wrong way!
While such an environment can stifle a child, for Antoinette it was a stimulus to explore the wider world, secure in her religion and her sense of fairness. One school friend writing to her husband after her death described her at the age of 10 as “a brilliant student, hard working, musical, sporty, and full of life and fun”. From a young age she was at boarding schools run by nuns who, although well meaning, probably also had a fairly restricted view of life and little experience of teaching A level science, but she transcended all that to study Natural Sciences at Girton College, Cambridge in 1965.
That was an eye opener for her. Some might have gone off the rails. Indeed, having got a third at the end of her first year, she was warned to pull her socks up. She was indeed sporty, playing netball for the university, musical – singing Elgar’s The Dream of Gerontius under David Wilcocks in King’s College Chapel – and intelligent and hardworking, graduating with a first in Pharmacology and Comparative Pathology.
She gained a Masters in Biochemistry at Chelsea; then a Thouron scholarship to the University of Pennsylvania at Philadelphia where her work was presented by her at the Meeting of The American Pediatric Society: Atlantic City, New Jersey, April 30, 1970, and published (CONDON, M., OSKI, F., DIMAURO, S. et al. Glycolytic Difference between Foetal and Non-foetal Human Fibroblast Lines. Nature New Biology 229, 214–215 (1971). https://doi.org/10.1038/newbio229214a0).
Antoinette returned to the UK at the end of that year to study for a PhD at the London Hospital.
In September 1972 she married Michael Ferraro, Peterhouse 1966-69, to whom she had been introduced by Anne de Bono, nee Fingleton, whilst at Girton, and stayed in contact while he studied for an MSc in fungal genetics at McMaster University, Ontario. He returned from Canada and joined his family business, an insurance broker specialising, among other things, in the jewellery trade.
Motherhood, two sons, Alastair in 1974, now a consultant nephrologist, and Adrian in 1975, who runs an ecological and adventure travel business for schools, delayed her PhD work on “Investigations into Human Galactokinase” which was finally completed in July 1975.
Living in Amersham with a new baby in 1974, she was introduced by a health visitor to what was then called National Housewives’ Register, now National Women’s Register, a social charity for “lively-minded women”, originally designed as an antidote to pureed carrots and nappies. NWR provided one of several social networks for her for the rest of her life. Indeed, she was due to attend their national conference in Sheffield a month after she died. She became their National Organiser in 1981 and computerised the records of their 1200 groups and 25,000 members, writing – with her husband – some early mapping software. The hardware, a pre-DOS Intertec Superbrain with twin 64kb floppy disks, is now in The Centre for Computing History in Cambridge.
Her husband’s business took the family to Plymouth for 18 months, then to Solihull for 10 years. In early 1986, she was offered an opportunity to return to research genetics under Professor Peter Farndon in Birmingham but working with radioactive phosphorus was not a good idea when pregnant with Claire, now MRCP qualified and working to become a public health consultant.
Returning to Amersham in ‘88, she worked in the computer department of Rectory Meadow Surgery, and became fund holding manager there, before moving to Little Chalfont Surgery as Practice Manager, transforming it from probably the least efficient practice in South Bucks to being the leading one for several years.
She finally retired in 2007, hoping to persuade her husband to do the same, but had to wait 5 more years. She wasn’t one to waste those years. She enjoyed:
- travelling – on every continent except Antarctica – including tramps in New Zealand, snorkelling in the Galapagos, Caribbean, Mauritius and Seychelles, trekking in the Himalayas, watching polar bears in Svalbard and gorillas in Rwanda;
- skiing, and even tried rock climbing, but couldn’t see the point of standing around waiting for others to do something she often found easy!
She was ambivalent about sailing, some of which she enjoyed, but NOT dislocating her shoulder, yachts in force 8 or 9 gales, or drowning her mobile phone, but that didn’t stop her introducing one of her grandchildren to a job on a superyacht!
She loved singing. In addition to CUMS and her church choir, local choral societies, and UK and overseas courses, she sang major works in Philadelphia, Vienna and the Albert Hall.
Despite 2 artificial knees and a hip, she especially loved the camaraderie of walking with friends or family: in the Canadian Rockies, Alps, Pyrenees, Scottish mountains, in the Lake District from the family timeshare and in the Chilterns with her huge group of U3A friends.
Above all, she spent much of her life helping others, including:
- charity clothes sales,
- the Lighthouse charity in Great Missenden,
- assisting in a Covid vaccination clinic,
- and especially as trustee of and treasurer to The Friends of the Belarusian Children’s Hospice. That charity grew over the last 17 years from her church’s charitable work, under the inspiration and dedication of one of closest friends who worked as a Russian interpreter. She visited Belarus on at least 7 occasions before the charity closed last year. The legacy of the charity is a fine, now self-sufficient, hospice for disabled children and a revolution in paediatric physiotherapy throughout Belarus – a country which, until FoBCH intervened, had archaic methods of physiotherapy and little concept of charitable fundraising.
She died suddenly from a haemorrhagic stroke while watering the garden, living her last days to the full:
- attending mass on Sunday, co-ordinating the music and helping with coffee afterwards
- Hosting NWR friends for a lunch party on Monday
- a 7 mile walk with U3A friends on Tuesday followed by a BBQ
with plans for a 5 mile “Walks into London” on Wednesday, and a flight to Madrid on Thursday for a singing course with the wife of the friend her husband was walking and mountain biking with in Scotland.
Tributes to her include:
- “The most humanitarian person I know”
- “Always a person who made others feel welcome and at home in her company”
- “Happy, attentive, efficient, generous “
- “A major support to anyone going through a difficult time”
She left the world a better place.