Tributes paid and fundraiser launched in memory of Havant man Bill Stanley, who died age 64

Bill Stanley, who was 64 when he passed away, battled a long fight with lung cancer, but sadly passed away earlier this year after going into hospital for a routine operation that resulted in him having a heart attack.

The 64-year-old, who worked at Janus International, had the chance to travel across Europe for his work. He met Jimmy Buchanan through the industry and worked alongside him for 15 years.

When Bill was diagnosed with cancer, he was given limited time, but he managed to fight for four years and participated in many drug trials and experiments.

Jimmy said: ‘I think the initial prognosis was a year but he signed up to a lot of trial drugs and there were times where you would look at him and you wouldn’t even know he was ill, but unfortunately he went into hospital to get something cleared in his lung and he died from a heart attack.

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‘Lots of guys that worked with him knew him but didn’t know him well enough to go to the funeral but we wanted to do something to show some respect.’

Jimmy’s team at JCL installations Limited came up with the idea of raising money for Cancer Research UK in memory of Bill, who was thought of highly by everyone he worked with. His work associates did not attend Bill’s funeral with his friends and families as they felt they did not know him well enough on a personal level to attend.

Jimmy, from Havant, was due to run the Richmond park half-marathon on November 6, and his team encouraged him to take part and try and raise some money by doing it.

He sent around the memo to his company and Bill’s company, and the fundraising took off to the point where he has now set up a GoFundMe page, which has over £2,500 raised already.

He added: ‘I was just going to keep it quite relaxed but once I mentioned it to people in the industry people wanted to donate quite a bit of money. It has raised so much money because a lot of people thought a lot of Bill and they were upset to hear of his passing.’

See www.gofundme.com/f/bill-stanley