In October 2006 very suddenly we lost a father, husband, son, brother and uncle – Graham Button to sudden cardiac death. Over the last 10 years the family have endeavoured to raise as much money as possible in Graham’s memory for CRY. Events have included walks, cakes sales and gala dinners. But this year to mark 10 years since Graham passed Cemlyn Bolton decided to do something a little different and daring. Cemlyn is 10 years old and was born shortly after Graham passed away. A great uncle to Cemlyn, who often takes pride looking at photos and hearing about Graham’s love of football, in particular West Ham, a sport they would almost definitely had in common.

Graham was from Essex and husband to Alison and Father to Daniel and Lauren who over the 10 years since his passing have learned to cope with their loss of their precious husband and dad whom they had shared so much with. Cemlyn from Saundersfoot, Wales attends Saundersfoot CP School and enjoys football and rugby. He loves school and thrives being part of any community event so this January he decided he would take part in the annual New Years Day Swim Saundersfoot on 1st January 2017.

The swim organised by a local family has been taking place for over 30 years and has grown each year with numbers of daring swimmers braving the icy waters for a new year ‘splash and dash’. So on Sunday 1st January 2017 Cemlyn (and his Mum, Sarah) popped their CRY t-shirts on and headed down to the village. The beginning of the event started with a photograph with swim mascot ‘Charlie Shivers’ (who Cemlyn has a close connection with) and then a warm up on the beach to Status Quo ‘Rockin’ all over the world’. After the 10 second countdown, Cemlyn (and Mum) along with 1,700 other swimmers ran towards the sea and entered the freezing cold water. After a brief splash around, before Cemlyn lost the feeling in his toes he headed back up the beach to get his new year swim medal. Whilst it was very very cold, Cemlyn was helped along knowing he had comfortably raised £550 for CRY! A huge thank you to those who donated to Cemlyn via JustGiving he’s made up.

Cemlyn Bolton