Phil Hammond fights brain haemorrhage to attend Hillsborough service
Apr 3 2009
EXCLUSIVE by Paddy Shennan, Liverpool Echo
COURAGEOUS campaigner Phil Hammond is clinging to the hope he can attend the Hillsborough memorial service he organised – having won a life and death battle, against all the odds, following a brain haemorrhage.
At one point, born fighter Phil, from Aigburth, whose 14-year-old son, Philip junior, died in the 1989 tragedy, wasn’t given any chance of survival.
But the 60-year-old chairman of the Hillsborough Family Support Group, who underwent two brain operations and has spent more than three months in the Walton Centre for Neurology and Neurosurgery, including eight weeks in intensive care, is now on the long road to recovery.
And having fought so many uphill battles since the disaster, Phil, who needed an artificial right leg fitted after a work accident when he was 21 and underwent a five-way heart bypass in 1998, is now facing another – to make it to Anfield on April 15 to attend the annual memorial service and receive, along with all the other Hillsborough families, the freedom of the city.
His devoted wife, Hilda, told the ECHO: “If it’s at all possible for Phil to be there, he will be at Anfield. But we have to be realistic and just wait and see. He so wants to be there for Philip and all the other victims, but it may be too early for him.
“Phil organised this service, just like all the others, and he had been discussing plans for the 20th anniversary with the Lord Mayor, Steve Rotheram, including the Freedom of the City and the release of The Fields of Anfield Road tribute CD, before he was taken ill on December 29.”
