The Earl of Dunraven and Mount-Earl

Thady Windham Thomas Wyndham-Quin was born in Dublin on October 27 1939, the only son of the 6th Earl of Dunraven and his American wife Nancy (née Yuille). The earldom had been created in 1822 for Valentine Richard Quin, who had already been ennobled in 1800 as Baron Adare; the Dunraven name was to honour his daughter-in-law Caroline Wyndham, the heiress who brought into the family the Dunraven estates in Wales. The 4th Earl served as Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies in Lord Salisbury's government of 1885-86, and was a great yachtsman who in the 1890s twice challenged unsuccessfully for the America's Cup.

Lord Dunraven

In 1940 the infant Thady was evacuated, with a nanny and his two older sisters Melissa and Caroline, to New York, to stay with the children's American grandmother. In 1943 their mother travelled to the United States on behalf of the Irish Red Cross, and was invited to the White House by Eleanor Roosevelt. When she returned to Ireland by military flying boat she brought her son with her – his sisters remained in New York until the end of the war.

In 1956 there was a polio epidemic in Cork, and Thady was of some 500 people (most of them children) who contracted the disease. It was not until he had returned to his boarding school in Switzerland, Le Rosey, that the symptoms showed, and he received treatment in Switzerland, France and in Oxford before returning in a wheelchair to his family home in Co Limerick.

Thady – who became Viscount Adare on the death of his grandfather in 1952 – had been a keen sportsman, enjoying riding and skiing. When his father took him to visit the trainer Vincent O'Brien at Ballydoyle in 1954, Thady had been allowed to ride Royal Tan shortly after the horse had won the Grand National.

To prepare himself for the responsibility of running the family's estates in Ireland and the Vale of Glamorgan, he studied at the Royal Agricultural College, Cirencester. But back in Ireland, it quickly became obvious to the young man that there were few wheelchair users to be seen in the towns and communities. Furthermore, no one seemed to know how many there were, in Limerick or in Ireland generally. "It became clear that a lot of wheelchair users were not registered because they lived at home and didn't require medical attention," he later said. "They were stuck in their homes and nobody knew about them except their families."

On the death of his father in 1965, he became the 7th Earl and inherited the family's estates. The rest of his life was devoted principally to the twin tasks of administering the estates and campaigning for the disabled in Ireland.
Dunraven was conscious of his comparative good fortune. "I had everything I could have had to make my life better. I had a full-time carer to look after me. He was my arms and legs, and I could go anywhere I wanted." He joined the Polio Fellowship of Ireland and began visiting other wheelchair users in Limerick. "I got what information I could and started visiting people at home, finding out what they needed."
He soon learned that a wheelchair user's quality of life depended on his or her family circumstances: "There was no such thing as a professional carer. You were looked after by your wife, mother, father or siblings."
He worked for the Limerick branch of the Irish Wheelchair Association (IWA) in the 1960s, and in 1971 was invited to be the IWA's first president, a role he fulfilled until 1990. As membership grew, so did general awareness of the plight of the disabled. By the late 1970s hotels were introducing accessible bedrooms and bathrooms; airports and airlines were providing special training for their staff.
On several occasions Dunraven travelled to the United States. "America after Vietnam," he said, "was suddenly faced with a huge number of disabled voters who, through no fault of their own, were suddenly landed on the state, disabled and in wheelchairs. The American government was forced to act by very strong and very determined citizens who were looking for the right to live a normal life."
Throughout his life Dunraven wore his disability with great courage, displaying an optimism and generosity of spirit that inspired those who knew him. At the Fort Union Stud at Adare, he bred racehorses – among them Iskereen (winner of the Pretty Polly Stakes at the Curragh in 1967 and placed in the Irish Oaks and the Prix Vermeille) and Lady Olein (trained by Jessica Harrington and winner of five races in 1991-92). Dunraven was also a great supporter of coursing in Ireland. In 2005 he was delighted when his nominated greyhound, Castle Pines, was the first Dunraven winner of the Irish Cup since the initial running in 1905.
In 1981, when there was little state support for historic houses in Ireland, he made the difficult decision to sell the family seat, Adare Manor. But he retained a substantial part of the Limerick estate, where he ran a successful beef farm.
He was very proud of his Irish connections, and loved spending time at his house by the sea at Derrynane in Kerry (bought by the family in 1858 from the estate of Daniel O'Connell), where he kept a large fishing boat in which he took friends fishing for lobster and mackerel.
Lord Dunraven married, in 1969, Geraldine McAleer, who cared for him with great devotion and survives him with their daughter, Ana. With his death the title becomes extinct.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/8448952/The-Earl-of-Dunraven-and-Mount-Earl.html