Linda Kerr, née Turnbull, knew from an early age that her calling was to become a nurse and help out the sick and needy.
Having completed her training at the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary, she set off for Sierra Leone in West Africa in 1956, joining a
Church of England mission to help some of the world's poorest children.
As a sister and midwife at the country's Nixon Memorial Hospital she made a huge impression and still receives Christmas cards from babies she delivered there.
She herself was born in the village of Scotby, near Carlisle, in 1933.
The daughter of a seamstress and a baker, the young Linda Turnbull enjoyed a happy childhood along with her sister, Freda.
Her sister ultimately settled with her American husband in New York, but Mrs Kerr still has a number of cousins in the area she grew up in.
She came to Edinburgh in 1951 at the age of 18 and entered her training at the Royal Infirmary.
During her time in Africa, Mrs Kerr would regularly make the long voyage back to the UK by boat.
She returned to the UK for good after seven years in Africa and, after having spells in Birmingham and London, she settled in Musselburgh in 1983.
She had married an Edinburgh man in the 1960s, but the couple separated after twenty years together.
In Musselburgh, Mrs Kerr took up a post as night sister at Edenhall Hospital, where she cared for people with spine injuries until retiring around a decade ago.
She also cared tirelessly for her mother, who lived happily at Southpark Nursing Home, Duddingston, in the later years of her life.
On her retirement from nursing, she moved to Joppa where she lives by the sea with her cat, Jules, and enjoys regular visits from her grandsons Matthew and Elliot.
She continues to work every weekend in her son-in-law's shop, Fantastic Scotland, in the Canongate.
She is so popular with visiting tourists they return to see her year after year and often ask to be photographed with her.
Alistair Mitchell, her son-in-law, describes her as his "lovely Saturday girl".
On Sunday, she was joined by her daughters Samantha Mitchell and Lindsay Kerr for a birthday lunch in Joppa.
The two daughters marked their mother's milestone by surprising her with a special birthday present – a trip to Rhodes.
The full article contains 436 words and appears in Edinburgh Evening News newspaper.
