With her wobbly head, messy hair and stiff joints, Susie had seen better days – but Maureen Donnachie loved every inch of her.
For the doll taught Maureen to walk when she was a toddler struck down with polio.
The 73-year-old says: “Susie represents the kindness, compassion and care from my parents and a lot of other people. She helped me repair when I couldn’t walk. And I would do anything to help her. I owe her that.”
Maureen, who stars in The Repair Shop’s festive special, says memories of first setting eyes on Susie on Christmas morning 1950 are vivid.
She recalls: “I was two and didn’t have the words to describe my emotions. I just remember my head and whole body filling with joy.”
Six months earlier, on holiday on the Scottish island of Millport, Maureen had caught polio. She says: “Polio was endemic then. It left people paralysed, or worse. Mum said I sat down in the middle of the road and refused to get up and walk again and that was the first sign something was wrong.
“Polio patients had to fully quarantine. Mum had to watch while I sailed off to hospital on a fisherman’s boat.”
Six months of hospital treatment and therapy followed.
A nurse told Maureen she’d been such a good girl that she would get a walking doll for Christmas. To prevent disappointing her little girl, Maureen’s mum Marion went to tremendous lengths to find one.
Eventually an assistant at Glasgow department store Lewis’s kept one by for her. Tilting Susie forwards and holding both hands made her legs take tiny steps.
Maureen’s dad used to kneel down holding the doll’s hands and her mum propped Maureen up. “While Susie took a step, I took a step,” says Maur-een. “Mum and Dad turned therapy into games. I didn’t know I was learning to walk again because I hadn’t realised what damage polio had done.”
Maureen went on to enjoy an active childhood, swimming and playing tennis, hockey and playground games.
She never forgot the medics who saved her, including a Dr McTavish.
She visited him every year to thank him even after marrying John, now 78, and having her three children Martin, 52, Maureen, 50, and Peter, 46. Susie went with Maureen through six house moves but began to show signs of wear.
So Maureen contacted BBC1’s The Repair Shop. She says: “Her walking mechanism jammed, one of her legs seized up and although I’d been warned not to brush her curls, I did… they were such a mess.
“John suggested I contacted Repair Shop and because we always watch it, I knew the experts took great care. So during lockdown I did. Susie was in their care for two weeks, the longest I’ve ever been apart from her. I was so amazed when I saw her. I couldn’t speak.
“I would like to find out where she had her hair done so I could book myself in.”
Maureen, who has been married to retired IT manager John for 53 years and has eight grandchildren, has post-polio syndrome.
It means mobility and speech problems still persist. “I can’t be repaired,” she says. “But I’m so happy Susie has been.”
Maureen, who now lives in Culcheth, Cheshire, wants Susie to be passed down through her family.
She adds of her Christmas Day plans: “Susie has always had her own chair and she’ll be sitting in the dining room where she has a nice view of the garden.
“She’ll be the centre of discussion with the grandchildren. Because of The Repair Shop experts, who I can’t thank enough, she has made me feel as happy as I did on that Christmas morning in 1950.”
- The Repair Shop at Christmas, Christmas Eve, 7pm, BBC1.
- britishpolio.org.uk
