One of Huddersfield’s top golfers and a man renowned across the world for his art were celebrating today.
Veteran golfer Sue Johnson and artist Dr David Blackburn were both named in the New Year Honours.
And there was also a gong for cancer battler Dr Kate Granger, who was brought up in Huddersfield.
Others receiving awards were teacher Gulfaraz Ahmed, of Huddersfield, who is head at a Calderdale school; actor and theatre director Barrie Rutter; Hollybank Trust fundraiser John Maddison Hall; and business leader David Horsman.
Click below to see who else made the New Year Honours list
Mrs Johnson, of Birkby, receives the OBE for services to golf and admitted; “I’m amazed and delighted”.
She is currently president of Huddersfield Golf Club and has been involved in the sport since she was 18.
She was first-ever joint President of England Golf, the first Lady President of the Huddersfield club and has also been Lady Captain.
At county level she has played for Yorkshire Ladies second team and has been Captain, President and Honorary Life President of Yorkshire Ladies Golf Association.
The mother of three, who took up golf at Meltham with husband Peter, said: “I got the letter a few weeks ago and it has taken time to sink in and appreciate.
“I still love the sport, even though I don’t get to play as often as I did”.
Dr Blackburn, 74, who receives the MBE, is regarded as one of Britain’s finest landscape painters and still lives in his home town. Sadly, he is in poor health.
He studied at the Huddersfield School of Art and the Royal College of Art before travelling to Australia to work in Melbourne.
He later returned and was involved with universities in Manchester and Oxford before taking up a post at Georgetown University in Washington, United States.
His work has been shown around the world and fellow artist Maxwell Doig said: “David Blackburn is not a landscape artist not an abstractionist in the ordinary sense. He is a painter of metamorphosis.” A new exhibition of his work opens at Brooksbank School, in Elland, on January 20.
Almondbury-born Dr Kate Granger has just been appointed as acting consultant in elderly medicine at Pinderfields Hospital.
And she has achieved the milestone despite living with gruelling treatment and pain due to her rare cancer, as well as running fundraising efforts and launching a hugely successful campaign to improve care.
Dr Granger, who lives at East Ardsley, receives the MBE for services to the NHS. She created a blog charting her battle with cancer and has 30,000 followers on her twitter account. Dr Granger was diagnosed with a rare form of cancer in 2011, aged just 29, when she was told the illness was terminal. She has carried on working and had a spell at Dewsbury District Hospital.
Huddersfield teacher Gulfaraz Ahmed, who is head at Parkinson Lane Primary School in Halifax, receives the OBE for services to education.
He has been head at the school for more than a decade and has seen it rise to become one of the best in the country, with an “outstanding” report from Ofsted.
Mr Ahmed lives in Dalton.
David Horsman, chairrman of the Lockwood-based Mid Yorkshire Chamber of Commerce, has been awarded the MBE.
Mr Horsman, 70, a retired solicitor who graduated in law at Leeds University, has been a non-executive director of the chamber for many years, championing the interests of member firms across Kirklees, Calderdale and Wakefield.
Mr Horsman, who lives at Halifax, is also a trustee of Project Challenge, an organisation helping disadvantaged and “at risk” children make a new start in life.
Barrie Rutter, who receives the OBE, is founder and artistic director of the Calderdale-based Northern Broadsides theatre group.
John Maddison Hall, 67, is chairman of the trustees at the Hollybbank Trust in Mirfield and has been fundraising for the charity for more than 25 years.
