‘Wing-walking’ granny flies high to raise funds for Humane Society

One of the original founders of the Cayman Islands Humane Society will take to the skies for a daring wing walk on top of a vintage airplane to raise funds for the charity – at the age of 82.

“All my friends think I’m mad,” says Sarah Hill, formerly Graham-Taylor, who lives in East Sussex, UK, but moved to Grand Cayman with her late husband Richard in 1971.

Hill, who moved to the UK in 1992, is hoping to raise funds for a local animal charity and thought it would be a great opportunity to raise money for the Cayman Islands Humane Society at the same time.

“I saw an advert in a magazine saying you could do a wing walk for Raystede Centre for Animal Welfare which is such a worthwhile cause and something close to my heart, so I volunteered,” she says. “There’s usually an age limit of 80, so I had to prove I could climb up onto the wing unassisted, which I could, so I made the cut!”

Fundraising target smashed

Even before she carries out her daredevil adventure, Hill has hit the headlines for her fearless fundraising. She has been interviewed by BBC Radio as well as featured on the front cover of the local village magazine, Uckfield Matters. Generous support for her causes has meant she’s already smashed her fundraising target of £800 (about CI$900) with £2,200 in donations pledged so far.

This isn’t the first time that the grandmother-of-two has taken to the skies for a good cause. At the age of 75, she did her first-ever parachute jump to raise funds for another local charity – “it was super, I absolutely enjoyed it!” she says – and is looking forward to her trip on the vintage American Stearman biplane next Saturday.

“It was manufactured in 1942, as was I, so it’s a good omen,” she jokes. “All my life I’ve been the sort of person that, if the opportunity arises, you just go for it.”

She co-founded the Humane Society in 1972 with her friend Lolli Reid to try and do something to help the many feral ‘bush dogs’ on island.

“There were an awful lot of stray dogs and nothing was being done about them,” she recalls. “The dogs would get bitten by mosquitoes – which at the time were simply dreadful – and they’d get heartworm, which was a horrible, very painful death for the dogs. It was a major problem.”

After Hill found two puppies wandering on the Mermaid mini-golf course on West Bay Road one evening – the puppies were so ill that they had to be put down – she decided that enough was enough.

“A group of us got together informally and decided that we should really do something about the situation, and the Cayman Islands Humane Society was born out of that,” she says.

The group put together a committee and held a fundraising event at the Town Hall, and things took off from there. Did Hill think that the society would still be going after all these years?

“I don’t think we ever thought about the future, but I’m very proud of the work that they’re doing,” she says. “They’ve done a super job.”

The Graham-Taylors raised their four children – Emma, Tara, Oona and John – in the Cayman Islands and Hill had very fond memories of their time on island. 

“It was just lovely,” she recalls, “Things were very different then! There was no radio, no television, no tarmac roads or high-rise hotels, there were just two flights a week, and a food boat on Friday, which meant the shops were really busy on Saturday mornings! Occasionally a shipment of English food such as Wall’s sausages would arrive, which we’d get very excited about.”

Hill takes to the skies Saturday, 14 June for the two charities. Donations can be made to her JustGiving page to support Raystede Centre for Animal Welfare in the UK or directly to the Cayman Islands Humane Society.