Tributes for wonderful community worker

Earlier this yearMrs Simpson had been one of the winners in the Women of the Year Awards at the City Hotel, where she took the title for her community work.

Among the first to pay tribute to the late Mrs Simpson was the Women’s Officer at Derry City Council, Joanna Boyd, who said: “Carol worked with me in the Caw 2000 house when I was manager of the Caw Centre from 1996, and she was an inpirational to all. Carol was an exceptional women and when I think about through her illness and nearing the end how stong a women she was.

“Carol was a dedicated family person but as Rev Craig stated at her funeral service she not only had her own family Bertie, three children and grandchildren she had many separtate families through her work in the Cross Border Project and the Women’s Sector. She will be sadly missed by all her friends,” she said.

In addition to being heavily involved in Caw/Nelson Drive Action Group and before that Caw 2000, Mrs Simpson was involved in the Foyle Women’s Information Network, and was a big fan of cricket as well as being heavily nvolved with Brigade Cricket Club. it was a widely known fact that Mrs Simpson had never missed a cricket match when Brigade were playing, and she was known to travel to matches no matter where she happened to be.

Close friend and FWIN officer, Catherine Cooke, paid tribute to Mrs Simpson saying: “Carol was a board member of Foyle Women’s Information Network and worked tirelessly for the group. She was a dedicated member of the organisation and helped with the strategic planning of acitivites. Carol will be missed by all the board of FWIN.

“Carol was a wife, a sister, a mother, a grandmother, an aunt, a friend, a worker, a volunteer, but most of all Carol was an inspiration to all who knew her,” she said.

Reflecting on Carol’s contribution to the Caw/Nelson Drive community, Linda Watrson, community for the Caw/Nelson Drive Action Group said: “Carol was vice chairperson of Caw/Nelson Drive Action Group and a wonderful friend to all. She was well respected not only within the Caw/Nelson Drive area, where she had been a community development worker for over 15 years, but right across the City.

“The community group has just completed Phase 1 of renovations to a block of four derelict flats in Nelson Drive into a new community centre and Carol was instrumental in getting this project off the ground. We were finding it difficult to source capital build funding and last year Carol encouraged us to start fundraising to get the building open for use. Thankfully we did and just last week with the help of the Fair Share programme and other fund raising initiatives we officially launched the ground floor of the centre.

“Unfortunately, Carol was not there to see it but I am sure she would have been very proud of how the flats have been transformed into a new modern, spacious facility that the whole community can use,” said Ms Watson.

“Carol also worked for the North South Cross Community Project were she organised holidays for senior citizens from the North West, both Catholic and Protestant, to go to Cork and Mornington in Drogheda every year. Many of them have been in touch with us to say how much they will miss her as she always made their holidays good fun and memorable,” she said, adding a personal tribute: “I personally will miss her not only as a close friend but for her good humour as she was always the life and soul of the party and as co-ordinator of the community group I could always rely on her knowledge and wisdom when I needed some-one to talk things over with.”

She added: “Carol’s door was always open to everyone and her heart lay in community work and just to see the crowds of people at her funeral was a fitting tribute to her many years of hard work.”

Mildred Garfield, former Alderman, who has taken over co-ordinating the holidays for the North South group for the remainder of the year, said Carol had been overseeing the exchanges to Mornington, Cork and Londonderry for 22 years, and described her as being heavily involved in community relations work in a cross-border capacity as well as within her own community.

“Carol will be sadly missed both as a worker for the North South organisation and as a friend to me because Carol and I not only worked on this project, but we were involved in quite a few other projects together. It will be hard to fill in for her, and even though I am filling in for her, I could never do the job she has done on this project,” Mrs Garfield said.

“At her funeral on Friday last the Minister of Kilfennan Presbyterian Church talked about a family circle, and that is so true, because everything that Carol was involved in was very much family-centered. She had her own family of course, the family she married into, and she was connected to the family in the community, and through her work in the North South organisation she tried to bring other families together from both sides of the divide,” Mrs Garfield said.

She said that the funeral service had been “standing room only” so large and representative was it of the people with whom Mrs Simpson had worked, and included people from Cork, Belfast, Lifford, Tuam and Donegal attending to pay tribute.

“It was very sad and emotional for everybody. Carol was very good to everybody she met and it did not matter who you were, if Carol could have helped you in any way, she would have went out of her way to help.

Mrs Simpson is survived by her husband, Bertie, sons Paul and Mark, and daughter Amanda, and wide family circle.