Paul Hodgson Jumps For Charity

September 2011

A former Able Seaman whose career was cut short by injury has swapped the seas for the skies to help other servicemen. Harte Lodge 4217 Entered Apprentice Paul Hodgson took part in a skydive to raise money for the forces charity Help For Heroes. Paul, 31, carried out the daredevil feat from 13,000ft with the Red Devils in Nottingham on August 31st 2011.

Paul had signed up for a career with the Royal Navy but only got to serve six years of a planned 22 years after months of intense training left him needing two knee operations. Paul told us, "I had a lot of problems with my left knee due to running on impact and I had a lot of physiotherapy before I went to sea." He was also given strong cortisone injections in a bid to take away the pain from his tendons. After a year, former electronic warfare specialist Paul was deployed to sea on HMS Kent and went on a three month tour of Iraq, where he was responsible for guarding oil rigs. The knee problems continued upon his return and he had two operations in 2008 but Paul was still in pain and in 2009 the Ministry of Defence declared him medically unfit for service and they deemed him 20 percent disabled.

Former sea cadet Paul, who is used to heights, having jumped 60ft from a helicopter onto the back of ships in his Navy days, said "I was devastated when I was discharged. I was hoping for a Navy desk job to finish my career but it wasn't to be."

After leaving the Navy he resumed his previous career as a Funeral Director and worked for the Hartlepool firm owned and ran by Bro Joel D Kerr, before becoming a regional sales manager for Golden Charter Funeral Plans.

Paul chose to raise money for Help For Heroes as Bro Kerr announced as his selected charity when he was inaugurated as the President of the Society for Allied and Independent Funeral Directors (SAIF) at a ceremony at Brands Hatch earlier in the year.

Bro Joel has recently introduced Paul into Freemasonry and is due to be passed to the second degree in September in Harte Lodge.

Paul had hoped to raise £2000 to give to the charity and thanks to the kind donations from the public, friends and family he has managed to smash that target in only a few short months. Paul said, "I am so grateful for all those who donated for the cause. We all know our troops work long hours away from their loved ones to serve our country, to serve us. Most of them return unscathed but there are those who are not so lucky and we owe them so much. The skydive was amazing and I would certainly recommend it to anyone looking to do something slightly out of the ordinary."

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