The husband of Dundee-based charity founder Loretto Lambe has paid tribute to his “amazing wife”.
Professor James Hogg said despite being very weak, Loretto carried on working right up to the end for PAMIS.
Loretto, 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 metastic melanoma for the past six years.
She died on Saturday in Roxburghe House in Dundee.
Speaking at the couple’s Wormit home, Mr 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.
“She kept going as long as she possibly could, working for the charity right up until two weeks before she died.”
Loretto was born in Sligo, Ireland, and trained as a pharmacist. She went 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, she formed the disability charity PAMIS.
Mr Hogg, who will be 75 later this week, said: “She was dedicated and for the first couple of years she took no salary herself.
“For the next 22 years she built it up into the organisation it became.”
Mr Hogg said she was very pleased the charity also became a research unit within the University of Dundee and was incredibly proud of the woman he first met on a train travelling between Leningrad and Moscow in 1977.
“Loretto was an amazing woman, a word that has been used about her by so many people in the past few days.
“When I first met Loretto on the train it was very romantic, like something from Dr Zhivago, but she wasn’t too fond of me to begin with.
“I was on a study tour she was leading and I was complaining a bit and making life difficult for her. However, we got over that and were together for the next 40 years.”
Professor Tim Kelly, Dean of the School of Education and Social Work at the University of Dundee, said Loretto was a tireless advocate for people with learning disabilities.
He added: “Her forceful energy will live on in PAMIS and the School of Education and Social work and the wider university remain committed to supporting PAMIS to promote a more inclusive society.”
Kirsty Thomson, the founder of the charity consultancy Along Came Kirsty, described Loretto as ‘inspirational’ and one of the most highly regarded academics within her field.