Eileen Coen:EILEEN COEN, who died on July 27th, devoted the best years of her life to helping others and, particularly, the elderly in Dublin living alone in underprivileged circumstances.
Eileen was born in Cork in 1931 and moved to Dublin in the early 1950s.
She had a life-long love of music and on moving to Dublin joined a choral society and a church choir. In the early 1970s she met her husband-to-be, Martin Coen.
Eileen’s social conscience had been pricked in the late 1960s at the sight of elderly people queuing outside the post office in all weathers to collect their pensions. Eileen was touched by their needs and in the autumn of 1970 she joined a social club with a focus on charitable activities. Eileen raised the plight of these elderly people living in very difficult circumstances and a number of the club members, including Eileen, started knocking on doors and visiting the elderly, bringing them companionship and small gifts.
Eileen met her late husband, Martin, when he joined the social club in February 1972 and they were married in 1974 and soon after they founded a new organisation called Concern for Dublin’s Old Folk Living Alone, which later became known as CareLocal.
Given the poverty that existed in Dublin up until the early 1990s, CareLocal, through its volunteers, provided not only companionship but also material support, such as food, fuel, underclothes and bed clothing. As the economy improved, Eileen recognised the fact that loneliness had become the greatest burden for many elderly living alone in Dublin and CareLocal shifted its focus to providing a befriending service, with volunteers visiting the elderly in their homes on a weekly basis.
Eileen was the most dedicated of all volunteers, making literally thousands of visits to the elderly of Dublin over 40 years.
Many of those visits were made on her bicycle, which she was still riding up until earlier this summer. Eileen devoted herself and her life to the elderly of Dublin. She was a fearless champion of their needs and would regularly contribute to Joe Duffy’s Liveline show when issues concerning the elderly were raised.
As well as being a founder and driving force behind CareLocal, Eileen was, from the outset, its primary fundraiser, organising sponsored walks, flag days and a gruelling annual carol-singing season, involving late night carol-singing in the pubs and clubs of Dublin, virtually every night from the beginning of December to Christmas.
It’s thanks to Eileen and her late husband that CareLocal now has almost 150 volunteers visiting an equivalent number of elderly every week. Eileen never sought any personal plaudits or recognition for a life devoted to others, but the sacrifice that she made touched the lives of countless people, both the elderly and CareLocal volunteers and she will be sorely missed by so many.
Eileen recently wrote a brief history of CareLocal and I would like to finish with a few of Eileen's own words: "Home is where the older person's heart is; at home they are familiar with everything and they thrive best because they feel love and security that results from valuable volunteer quality time". – MF