TCF Logo Story

THE TCF LOGO used around the world today, started out in Harlow, Essex, in 1975, a few months after we lost our daughter, Clare, in a road accident. I was already working for the National Committee of the Friends (as we called ourselves in those days) and had suggested a logo. Because I had a picture of it close to hand, I based a first quick sketch on the hands of Adam and God, reaching for each other in Michaelangelo's painted ceiling in the Sistine Chapel. But it wasn't right. My wife, Maggie, who was in those days what TCF called the “grid rep” for Essex, asked me wisely how such a symbol might relate to a Hindu, an agnostic or an atheist who had lost a child. So it went back to the drawing board before I took the version you see today to our next meeting.

The original artwork was in black, on a white board and I propped it up at the end of the table we sat around. What I had forgotten was that one of the people sitting there was blind. He asked me to describe what was intended to speak for itself. Taken by surprise I blathered on about the four essential elements in the design as I saw them. Firstly, I said, it was circular, symbolising wholeness or completion. I tried to describe the lines and the “vanishing point” they created. At this point, I explained there was a figure, representing a child, standing some way off at the top centre of the design, in the “road” created by the converging lines and moving away towards an horizon. In the front foreground, I concluded, “reaching for each other in the darkness were two hands, about to touch.

There was a silence of perhaps five seconds. “You see this child receding down this road?” he asked quietly. Obviously I hadn't made myself clear. “That's right,' I said. “Has it occurred to you, John, that the child might actually be coming closer towards you?” His words took my breath away. In those dark days before I took a conscious decision to set out on what others have called “the long search” I believed that we had lost our daughter forever. He had listened to my words but read my heart.

The committee chose first green as the colour of the symbol and later, blue. It began to appear on the letterhead, the newsletter, an enamel lapel badge and a folded card with an illustration on the front painted for us by a well-known illustrator, David Smee, that we used to raise funds. We sent the UK design to the US, where it was taken up by the Compassionate Friends in America, in those days headed up by Paula and Arnold Shamres, in Florida. They too had lost a daughter, Gabrielle, in a car accident and like so many of the Friends we were privileged to meet, were fine people.

Thirty years on, we live in Devon, where I continue to earn a living with my pen whilst Maggie has spent her working life, first with young children as a classroom assistant, then as a medical secretary, working today in the oncology department at the county hospital. Our children, Gregory and Elizabeth, have grown and married and we are blessed with four beautiful grandchildren. As for the logo, this was our gift to TCF and although we know that nothing is forever, we hope that it may continue to serve - as a reminder of what this extraordinary international fellowship of compassionate friends is all about.

The passage below is taken from an article by John Fisher, which appeared in the Autumn 2003 Edition of “Compassion”, the quarterly journal of The Compassionate Friends (UK).