Eileen Coen R.I.P

It is with great sadness that the staff and director's of CARELOCAL must announce the passing of our dear friend and colleague Eileen Coen. Eileen founded CARELOCAL in the 1970's with her late husband Martin and remained committed to the organization and its work throughout her life. 

Eileen’s participation in our recent Howth Walk fundraiser illustrates this point perfectly. CARELOCAL’s annual Howth walk was first organized by Eileen over ten years ago and every year she- through her own personal efforts- had managed to persuade a small but committed group of participants to take part. In 2009 the staff at CARELOCAL decided to assist Eileen by publicising this important fundraising activity more widely in order to attract a greater number of walkers. Eileen corresponded with the office throughout the course of our planning and shortly before the walk stopped by for an update. During that meeting we discussed with Eileen the difficulty we were having persuading companies to donate food and refreshments for our Howth Walk ‘goodie bags’. After listening to our concerns, Eileen decided that this would not do and insisted that our walkers deserved a greater reward for their participation than we could offer. Within one hour of making this statement Eileen returned to the office with commitments from a number of local fruit sellers to supply us with fresh produce on the day.

On the day of the walk Eileen was present to thank all of our participants for their generosity and to regale the staff and volunteers with stories of the foundation of CARELOCAL and its various activities down through the years. She commented on that day that she was proud to see so many people take time out to support CARELOCAL and its efforts but remained characteristically modest regarding her own critical role in the organizations success. Several weeks later Eileen called the office to inform us that she would be lodging more than €700 into CARELOCAL’s  bank account, a very significant amount of money that she had managed to raise by participating in the walk.  Not long after we would learn that Eileen had passed away and as we mourned and reminisced over our experiences with Eileen we could all agree that her efforts relating to the Howth Walk demonstrated her commitment to and enthusiasm for the work of CARELOCAL, an organization that came about as a result of her exceptional will to help others, a quality that she retained gracefully until the end of her life.

Eileen, we will miss you when we are walking your walk and when we are visiting the many older people served today by CARELOCAL because of the vision that you had 40 years ago.  Your work will be remembered in each of our visits, with each happy hour shared between CARELOCAL visitors and their older friends.  Thank you for your inspiration. Thank you for the years you have dedicated to this very worthwhile mission.  But most of all thank you for CARELOCAL.

From Linda Desmond and the staff of CARELOCAL.

To read a Eulogy to Eileen given by David Fitzgerald, Chairperson of the board of CARELOCAL please click here (pdf 46kb). 

To read about the history of CARELOCAL in Eileen's own words please click here (pdf 89kb).