PRESIDENT MARY McAleese and Taoiseach Brian Cowen yesterday led tributes to the “visionary” and “inspirational” founder of the Special Olympics movement, Eunice Kennedy Shriver, who died yesterday.
The games for people with intellectual disabilities have grown to include 190 countries since they began in 1968. They were were hosted by Ireland in 2003.
Ms Kennedy Shriver was inspired by her older sister Rosemary, who had an intellectual disability. The games’ origin was a day camp she set up for young people in June 1962.
A year later in June 1963, she accompanied her brother, the late US president John F Kennedy and her sister, former US ambassador to Ireland Jean Kennedy Smith, on a visit to Ireland.
“The first words that Éamon de Valera said to us on arrival were ‘céad míle fáilte’,” Ms Kennedy Shriver recalled during a visit to Ireland for the 2003 Special Olympics.
“Forty years later, Im proud to have returned to Ireland, to a place where people with intellectual disabilities need no longer feel ashamed of them, and where this last week there has been a céad míle fáilte for all our athletes.”
Some 7,000 athletes took part in the games in Ireland which were opened by Nelson Mandela before a crowd of over 80,000. It was the first time the Special Olympic Games had been held outside the United States.
Chief executive of the 2003 Special Olympic Games Mary Davis said the whole movement was saddened by the passing of an “outstanding leader”.
“All she wanted was for people with intellectual disabilities to be respected, to be included and be involved and take their part in the workplace and in community life,” Ms Davis said on RTÉ radio yesterday.
President Mary McAleese described her as a “visionary” who “devoted her life to creating a better and more inclusive world for people with disabilities”. Mrs McAleese is to contact the Shriver family directly.
Taoiseach Brian Cowen said she was a woman of “great courage and an inspiration to all” and who always had “a love of our country and its people”.
The 2003 games gave Ireland a chance “to show the world who we are and just what being Ireland of the welcomes really meant”, Minister for Arts, Sport and Tourism Martin Cullen said yesterday.
