“Along with celebrity chums including David Jacobs and Wilfred Pickles, she set out to change people’s attitudes towards the disability and help children reach their full potential. Vera Lynn Skypes with students from her former east London school, Brampton Primary, on her 100th birthday. Her daughter, Virginia Lewis-Jones, said in the statement: “My mother first became involved in raising awareness of cerebral palsy in the 50s when there was very little understanding of the condition and children who suffered from motor learning difficulties were often referred to rather pejoratively as ‘spastic.’ She was also the first English singer to make it to number one in the American music charts. Lynn’s two most famous songs, “We’ll Meet Again,” released in 1939 at the start of the war and “The White Cliffs of Dover,” recorded in 1942, created a patriotic image of a courageous and phlegmatic Britain that resonates with people in the UK even today.

Lynn, who lived in Ditchling, East Sussex, England, died Thursday morning “surrounded by her close family,” the statement posted on the charity’s website said. British singer Vera Lynn, whose sentimental ballads during World War II provided the soundtrack for the Allied war effort, has died at the age of 103, according to a statement from the Dame Vera Lynn Children’s Charity on Thursday.