The husband of Dundee-based charity founder Loretto Lambe has paid tribute to his “amazing wife” who was an inspiration to so many others.
Professor James Hogg said despite being very weak Loretto carried on working right up to the end for PAMIS, the charity she was passionate about.
Loretto, who has died aged 72, established the charity for young people with multiple learning disabilities and their carers in Dundee in 1992. She retired last November.
She had been battling metastatic melanoma for the past six years.
She died on Saturday in Roxburghe House in Dundee.
Prof Hogg said: “Loretto had gone in for a blood transfusion but her condition deteriorated while she was there.
“She was a perfectionist and meticulous to the end and kept going as long as she possibly could, working for the charity right up until two weeks before she died.”
He said his wife, who was born in Sligo in Ireland, trained as a pharmacist.
She came to England in 1975 and joined MENCAP. In 1985 she established the Profound Disability Project in Manchester and seven years later, after she moved to Dundee, formed PAMIS.
Prof Hogg said he was incredibly proud of the woman he first met on a train travelling between Leningrad and Moscow in 1977.
“It was very romantic, like something from Dr Zhivago, but she wasn’t too fond of me to begin with,” he said.
“I was on a study tour that she was leading and I was complaining a bit and making life difficult for her. However, we got over that and were together ever since for the next 40 years.”