A POPPY appeal organiser is stepping down after 18 years in charge of the annual fundraising drive at a York branch of the Royal British Legion - having helped raise half a million pounds for the fund.

Richard ‘Dick’ Shaw, 76, of Anson Drive, Fulford, took three weeks’ unpaid holiday each year from his job in security at Imphal Barracks to organise the annual appeal by the legion’s Fulford and District Branch.

“It was a task he loved,” said branch spokesman Ian Smith.

Now retired and a keen angler, he has devoted much of his spare time to the appeal. Mr Smith said: “Over the past 18 years under his guidance, and with help from the branch, he has been responsible for the raising of £500,000 - an astonishing sum from a branch with under 100 members.

“This year, the total raised was £34,950.70.

“We would like to thank everyone involved, be they collectors or donators.”

He said the branch wished Dick all the very best for the future and welcomed Paul Collingridge as the new poppy appeal organiser.

Dick, who was in the Army from 1959 to 1981, serving as a sergeant with the Royal Tank Regiment, settled down in Fulford on leaving the Army and joined the legion in the early 1990s. He was appointed the appeal organiser in 1998.

Dick said that when he took over the appeal, the branch raised about £8,000 a year, but then the Designer Outlet opened at Fulford and he won permission to set up three tables selling poppies throughout the appeal fortnight in the warmth of the centre, giving a major boost.

The branch also sold the poppies at the B&Q store in Hull Road.

He said soldiers from Imphal Barracks and girls from Queen Margaret’s School at Escrick helped branch volunteers sell the poppies.

He said he had very much enjoyed organising the appeal but was getting to the stage where he was ‘forgetting things and waking up in the night with my heart racing after remembering them,’ and decided it was time to stand down.

“I will still be doing collecting, though,” he said.

Mr Shaw was presented with a certificate of appreciation by the branch president Derek Thornton for his services.