Tessa Jowell, Who Pushed for London’s Olympics, Dies at 70
|
Version 0 of 1. LONDON — Tessa Jowell, a former British culture secretary who played a key role in securing the 2012 London Olympics and used her own cancer diagnosis to campaign for better treatment, died on May 12 at her home in Warwickshire. She was 70. Her family confirmed the death in a statement. Ms. Jowell learned last year that she had a brain tumor. Ms. Jowell was a Labour Party stalwart who served under Prime Minister Tony Blair as the secretary of state for culture, media and sport from 2001 until 2007. After Gordon Brown became Prime Minister in 2007 she was a minister and shadow minister until 2011. During her government career she championed social programs to help women and children and helped oversee a restructuring of the BBC and the creation of Ofcom, a broadcasting regulator, in the early 2000s. But it was her work securing the Olympics for London that made her known to the general public. Ms. Jowell pushed the British government to bid for the Olympics despite economic concerns, and the International Olympic Committee chose London on July 6, 2005. The next day four suicide bombers targeted London’s public transportation system, killing 52 people and injuring hundreds more. Mr. Blair asked Ms. Jowell to coordinate the government’s support for survivors and the bereaved. She later said she often thought about the attacks, especially during the two-minute silence at the London Games’ opening ceremony. “I saw the forward-looking, expansive, optimistic vision of Britain that the opening ceremony represented, and I thought again that this was something the bombers and their supporters would have hated — all those nations, with their different views, their different cultures, their different traditions, coming together in a spirit of peace and play,” she said. “So it was a deeply civilized thing that we did in those marvelous two weeks in the summer of 2012.” Tessa Jane Helen Douglas was born in London on Sept. 17, 1947. Her family later moved to Aberdeen, Scotland, and she studied at the University of Aberdeen and received a degree in social administration from Edinburgh University. After moving to London, she worked as a child-care officer, social worker and director of different charities before being elected to Parliament in 1992. She married Roger Jowell in 1970. After that marriage ended she married David Mills, a tax lawyer. They parted after he was involved in a controversy related to a large payment he received from Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi of Italy, but later reconciled. In addition to her husband, her survivors include their children, Jessie and Matthew, and three stepdaughters. Ms. Jowell delivered a memorable speech in January before the House of Lords calling for improved information-sharing and better access to care for cancer patients. The speech moved her fellow peers to tears and elicited a rare standing ovation. “In the end, what gives a life meaning is not only how it is lived, but how it draws to a close,” she said. “I hope that this debate will give hope to other cancer patients, like me, so we can live well together with cancer — not just dying of it. All of us — for longer.” |