TOM STEPHENS: Tom Stephens, who died on April 2nd aged 83, played an important role in the development of services for people with polio and other disabilities.
Through the Polio Fellowship of Ireland he helped to integrate people with polio into mainstream society, and the PFI has continued to work for people with other disabilities in the decades since polio was defeated in this country.
He and others who helped to found the PFI in the early 1950s were part of a wave of activity which saw the creation of services for people with disabilities by lay people and not, as would traditionally have been the case, by the religious orders. Other examples include the Central Remedial Clinic, the Rehab Institute and St Michael's House. Very often the impetus was the wish of parents to enable their children live as full a life as possible.
Thomas (Tom) Joseph Stephens was born in Kimmage, Dublin, on April 2nd, 1919, to Joseph and Rebecca (née Byrne) Stephens and educated in the local primary school. He was the eldest of a family of five brothers and five sisters. His father was killed in 1932 when a boiler exploded in St Brendan's Hospital, where he worked.
He worked for years for Burmah Castrol, first as a driver and later as a sales representative. He was heavily involved in trade union affairs during his time with the company. He left Burmah Castrol in the late 1960s and took on the full-time role of managing the Polio Fellowship of Ireland.
He had been the prime mover behind a small group of people, mainly parents of children with polio, who founded the Polio Fellowship of Ireland (originally the Infantile Paralysis Fellowship) in 1952.
He had married Sheila Carroll, from the Coombe in Dublin, in 1946 and their eldest daughter Sheila had got polio. Polio is caused by a virus which attacks the central nervous system, particularly in children aged between five to 10, and causes serious physical disability including, at worst, paralysis and an inability to breathe unassisted.
PFI was the first organisation for people with polio in Ireland. Up to then services were so underdeveloped that even the number of people who had polio was not known. At Tom Stephens's instigation a nationwide survey on its incidence was carried out with the help of final-year social science students from University College Dublin and Trinity College Dublin.
He also began a nationwide fund-raising campaign to pay for a vocational assessment unit in Lower Hatch Street, Dublin, followed by the introduction of a comprehensive range of rehabilitation and care services for people with polio and other disabilities. PFI's fund-raising work included the famous "polio dances" in Clery's in Dublin. These popular dances often took place three or four nights a week in the 1960s and were also held around the country.
At a time when people with disabilities were traditionally shut away or, at least, kept out of sight, the PFI insisted that people with polio be trained and educated to take up jobs in the workplace. As a result of its efforts, almost everybody with polio worked. Some people with polio were educated up to degree level with the help of PFI, though few of its founders had themselves been to university. And the services were not just for people with polio. Tom Stephens's philosophy was that nobody with a disability should be turned away. Many people who later joined the Irish Wheelchair Association, for example, were trained at Park House, PFI's main centre.
The establishment of the residential, day-care and training centre at Park House - a 14-roomed Georgian building on 3½ acres in Stillorgan, Co Dublin - was one of his proudest achievement.
The development of a vaccine in the mid-1950s was the breakthrough in the fight to remove the scourge of polio. However, the role of the PFI continues to be vital for those already afflicted and, of course, for people with other disabilities.
In 1986, Tom Stephens led the PFI into a merger with the then Rehab Institute (Rehab Group) and Park House continues to operate training and day activity centre services under the PFI banner to this day.
For more than 40 years he served on the national council of the Disability Federation of Ireland, originally known as the Union of Voluntary Organisations for the Handicapped.
Polio has long been defeated throughout most of the world, but the past decade or so has seen the emergence of "post-polio syndrome" in people who were affected by polio when they were young. The syndrome weakens the condition of these people as they get older. When the Post-Polio Support Group was formed in the early 1990s, its members went to Tom Stephens to ask for funding from the PFI. He readily agreed to the funding, which the group has been receiving since.
Tom Stephens had a deep interest in church affairs and was a Knight of Columbanus and a Knight of the Order of the Holy Sepulchre. He and his wife Sheila, who pre-deceased him, had six children, Sheila, Marie, Bernadette, Barbara, Carmel and Thomas. Barbara died of leukaemia at the age of four.
Tom Stephens is survived by his children, his sisters, Mai, Rita, Betty, Bridget and Claire, and his brothers Gerard, Paddy and Seán. One brother, Joey, pre-deceased him.
Thomas Joseph Stephens, born 1919, died, April 2002