Mary Howard, model and philanthropist, was born on January 3, 1945. She died in a car accident on November 9, 2008, aged 63

Mary Howard was the Queen of Christmas Fairs, having raised more than £1 million for numerous charities including the NSPCC and Help for Heroes. Howard, pictured right, created and ran the Mary Howard Sales, which began in the 1980s and became one of the largest arts, crafts and home-cooked food fairs in the UK. In 2005 she was awarded a lifetime achievement award by the NSPCC for her tireless efforts on its behalf.

She was born Mary Johnson in 1945 in Cheshire, the daughter of a young American doctor, Johnny Johnson, and his English society wife, Betty. She trained as a nursery school teacher, but shortly after beginning her first job at Lady Eden’s School, London, she was spotted by one of her father’s friends who ran a model agency and convinced her that she could make better use of her good looks with a career in modelling. She worked for the fashion designer Mary Quant for two years before marrying Patrick Howard, the son of the 20th Earl of Suffolk, Charles Howard.

The idea for the sales first came to Howard in 1982 when she organised an exhibition of needlework to raise money for the NSPCC. Such was its success that she decided to hold an event annually. Each year the number of stalls grew until she and her husband moved the event to a nearby air hangar at an RAF base to accommodate the numbers. Howard and her husband ran the fairs purely for charity for ten years before the organisation grew so large that they decided to make this their business and expand to venues in York and Sandown.

Howard’s dynamism in getting people involved in the charity ensured the success of her fairs.

Sigitas Geda, poet and translator, was born on February 4, 1943. He died of cancer on December 12, 2008, aged 65

Sigitas Geda was a leading Lithuanian poet whose work drew eclectic inspiration from local landscapes and traditions, Christian doctrine, ancient mythology, and the work of other poets and artists.

Born in the village of Pateriai in southwestern Lithuania, Geda studied Lithuanian philology at Vilnius University, graduating in 1966. In the same year his first volume of poetry, Footprints, was published. Its contents marked a departure from the socialist realism which had been imposed on Lithuanian verse since the country’s incorporation into the Soviet Union. Geda sought inspiration in the rhythms and themes of folk songs to produce his lyrical tributes to the countryside and traditions of his homeland. A similar celebration of local tradition was apparent in Strazdas (1967), a narrative poem about the priest and poet Antanas Strazdas (1760-1833). Taking inspiration from his subject’s name, which means “thrush”, Geda represented Strazdas as a fantastic creature, half-man and half-bird.