Shooting for the stars and reaching the moon

However, one thing he did say has stuck with his son forever.

“He said that when you're planning your life, you should try and imagine you're a grandparent and you're looking at your grandkids and you've got to tell them a story,” remembers Gerard.

“The important thing is to make sure it's actually an interesting story.”

Now, as the grandparents of 11 children, Gerard and wife Dianne definitely do have an interesting tale to tell and one which makes them extremely deserving winners of this year’s in-Cumbria Robin Burgess Lifetime Contribution to Cumbria Award, sponsored by BAE Systems.

Over the last 30 years they have often been at the heart of life in Whitehaven and West Cumbria, as the driving force behind the Whitehaven Festival for 18 years, as well as many other events and initiatives, and with Dianne now the chief executive of Britain’s Energy Coast Business Cluster.

Originally from Cleator Moor and Mirehouse respectively, Gerard and Dianne met at a party in 1983 shortly after he joined the Royal Navy as an engineer.

Four years later they were married.

“I think probably we were lucky in finding each other, because I think we probably brought out the best in each other,” says Dianne.

The pair both grew up in working class families, Dianne the daughter of Michael, a factory manager, and mum Linda who worked in administration at Sellafield.

Meanwhile, Gerard was one of five, raised by mum Alice alongside dad Jim who worked as an electrician at Marchon.

"I guess looking back, it's probably that generation that everyone goes on about now, you know, we climbed trees and rode our bikes all day,” says Gerard.  “We had a lovely childhood.”

Dianne with the BECBC board (Image: Dianne Richardson)

Gerard’s elder brother joined the Navy as a marine engineer and he followed as an aircraft engineer in 1981.

His time in the Navy took him across the British Isles as well as to Gibraltar maintaining search and rescue helicopters before joining the fire brigade at Sellafield in 1986.

However, he was always on the lookout for new projects.

One such project came in the form of acting as a magistrate at the local courthouse, a role he took on for 18 years.

Gerard also developed a taste for wine after one of his first experiences of drinking it while toasting he and Dianne’s engagement with her parents.

The next year she bought him a book on wine by Oz Clark, which listed the top 20 wine merchants in the UK.

He started the wine merchants, vowing it would make the list the following year - which it did.

The business ran alongside Gerard’s other roles as a magistrate and fireman and emergency medical technician at Sellafield but he left the site to work on it full time in 2001.

Richardson’s of Whitehaven, on Lowther Street, has since become a destination in its own right in the town’s high street.

"When you open a shop you can be the type that opens the shop and stands behind the counter and waits for customers to come, or you can be the type that rolls up your sleeves and makes the customers come to the town, not just to your shop,” says Gerard.

“We decided from the very get go that that's what we were going to do.”

However, the most influential and life-changing of his ideas had already come in the mid-nineties.

"I came home from the shop one day and I said to Dianne that I'd scribbled down a few ideas down about a festival for Whitehaven," he says.

"Dianne's always been a good sounding board and I thought if she thinks it's stupid then that's it, it's a non-starter.”

Dianne, however, loved the idea and that night the Whitehaven Maritime Festival was born.

“Little did I know what I was saying yes to,” adds Dianne.

The first festival in 1999 attracted 80,000 people and they initially ran every two years, with the number of people coming to the events rising to 200,000 over a weekend.

A typical festival included two live stages, a giant fair, over 200 stalls, celebrity chefs, air shows, tall ships, multiple street theatre performers, deep dive displays and on three occasions, ferry trips along the coast by the MV Balmoral.

Musical acts which came to the festival over the years included Status Quo, Madness, Katherine Jenkins and the Royal Philharmonic

"None of it made business sense, to be honest,” says Gerard.

“I’m one of those people that's never settled. I always thought I could do something more. The key thing was that we've just backed each other up.

"I've always said to people, if you feel like you need to spread your wings or you're unhappy in your job, you don't always have to just go looking for a new job. You can create an entirely new life simply by volunteering.”

Meanwhile, Dianne’s career saw her work for the Civil Service at Mark House, in Whitehaven, before taking on and running a tea room in Whitehaven.

She then worked as a smoke-free officer for Copeland and Allerdale councils, advising businesses on how to adapt to the smoking ban which came in in 2007 and then at Lakes College, helping businesses access trainees and apprentices.

She studied for a degree in business management with UClan and then worked for Cumbria Growth Hub.

Dianne stepped into the nuclear sector when she became social impact and communications manager for international infrastructure group Balfour Beatty in West Cumbria, in 2017, and then social impact lead at KBR, one of the four major companies which are part of Sellafield Ltd’s Programme and Project Partners (PPP) delivery model.

"I think the thread that runs through everything for us you would now label as social value," says Dianne.

"All the volunteering that we did was to try and improve the area."

Dianne and Gerard with some of their large family (Image: Dianne Richardson)

Although Gerard was considering bringing the festival to an end in 2007 he was still determined to do something special to mark the 300th anniversary of the formation of Whitehaven Harbour and the granting of its market charter, which fell in 2008.

Accordingly he sent a letter to Buckingham Palace inviting the Queen to come to the town to help celebrate the occasion.

He was duly informed the Queen would attend if Gerard could attract a good crowd for the visit, along with an air show and visit by some tall ships, although at the time he had no idea how he would do it.

"The worst thing was that we had to plan it all in secret,” he remembers.

Planning and delivering the successful visit - which fell in a year between festivals - reinvigorated their passion for events and they continued to organise the festival every year until 2015, with Gerard earning an MBE for his efforts in the 2011 New Year’s Honours List.

In 2014 he was also given an award for strengthening diplomatic ties between America and the UK due to the regular involvement of the United States Navy in the events he organised.

"For a few festivals, they sent us marines and they took part in activities and then in 2003 we were trying to really build up the relationship, and I was trying to get a pair of Tomcat F-14s to take part in an air show,” he says.

“I got a phone call from the American Navy saying they were really sorry they couldn't send F-14s but they could send a missile destroyer.”

The result was that Whitehaven welcomed the very first visit of a United States warship since John Paul Jones attacked the town during the American War of Independence in 1778.

Gerard followed this up by suggesting they should formalise the relationship by appointing an honorary consul. The Americans initially found this quite an odd proposal until he told a “porky pie”, explaining that the previous consul (who did not exist) had stepped down and they needed a replacement.

So, in 2007, retired United States Admiral Steve Morgan was appointed as consul complete with a ceremony attended by the Marine Corps in Copeland Council’s Bainbridge Room.

"Gerard has a way of asking for things," says Dianne.

“Whereas other people would think, 'I'm never going to get that' he absolutely shoots for the stars and reaches the moon.”

There was also a crossover between the festival and the wine merchants, which attracted the attention of TV chef Ken Hom, who began buying clarets and asking Gerard for advice for his own table, as well as for wines which he could recommend for his friend and Manchester United manager Sir Alex Ferguson.

Gerard also befriended TV chefs Keith Floyd and Jean-Christophe Novelli, both of whom appeared at the festival over the years. Jean-Christophe and Gerard have also collaborated on two recipe books together.

Following a diagnosis of kidney cancer and an operation to remove one of his kidneys, Gerard stepped back from running the festival and it came to an end in 2015 at about the same time as Dianne’s career in social value was really taking off.

She says social value is all about ensuring companies add value that goes beyond their balance sheet.

"We always want to measure everything, and it's a lot easier if you can put a number against it,” she says.

“But if you think about what you value, it's if your children are going to a good school; it's whether they're safe playing outside; it's whether you've got a community around you with lots going on; it's whether you go into the town and it feels vibrant in your local town.

“You can't put monetary value on any of that and you don't have businesses existing here and a community existing there. They are absolutely symbiotic. So in every action that a business takes, there will be an impact. Social value is about how you maximise the positive of that and minimise the negative of that by being aware of those decisions.”

Alongside this, she has also volunteered and supported many other local organisations.

“Whether it's supporting local schools, which she started over 30 years ago when she was chair of governors at Hensingham Primary, or her support for the homeless hostel in Egremont or travelling the length and breadth of the UK trying to get new investment for the area, Dianne has barely stopped this last few years and it's way in excess of what she is required to do,” says Gerard.

“To be honest she is like this Duracell bunny who never gives up shouting for the county and even I have no idea where she gets her drive.”

Dianne feels extremely positive about the future for West Cumbria, providing businesses can come together to make their case effectively to reap the greatest benefits they can.

"The UK needs huge amounts of energy and Cumbria has a really experienced and expert supply chain here,” she says.

“But we can't sit here yet and just expect people to come knock on our door.

“We've got to get out there and shout. We can be a bit northern sometimes and we don't want to boast, but we need to because it's a busy marketplace out there.”

In recent years Gerard’s health challenges have continued after he was diagnosed with multiple tumours last year.

However, this has not stopped him from carrying on working in the community and organising events with Whitehaven Town Council.

He is also working on his latest local history book, following on from four already published in collaboration with photographer Ivor Nicholas which document the history of West Cumbria in old photos.

The busy couple have also raised their own family of four children, Darren, Brenna, Luke and Josh, with the challenges of recent years softened by the arrival of two new grandchildren.

“I’m on treatment every day, and to be perfectly honest we've had some really bad times,” says Gerard.

“But we've also had two new grandchildren in the last couple of years. So there's always something to be positive about.

“But it is very hard to live with and I've got a healthy new respect for anyone who's going through long term illness.”

Whatever happens in their own lives, the couple are determined to continue working with local business and the community for as long as they can.

"I'm always really aware that I've got this job title of a CEO and we've got somewhere nice to live and I'm always really aware that there is an element of luck to that,” says Dianne.

“If you're born onto a council estate, the chances of that happening are less than if you're born into a wealthy area.

“So we have to show people what is possible, and that you don't have to be held back, but also give them that hand up, which is really important for both of us.”