Lady Heather Mills McCartney took time to meet members of the team who will represent Ireland at the Games; here she poses with Jonathan Kilpatrick of Blackrock and Laura Jane Dunne, Dundrum. [Photo by Bill Bernstein] Learn more about Mills McCartney's life and charitable involvement by visiting her Web site._
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With just over 20 days to go until the Opening Ceremony of the 2003 Special Olympics World Summer Games, Lady Heather Mills McCartney took time to meet members of the team who will represent Ireland at the Games.
The occasion was a concert by Mills McCartney's husband, former Beatle, Paul McCartney, who performed in Dublin on 27 May. Laura Jane Dunne of Dundrum, and Jonathan Kilpatrick of Blackrock were invited backstage to meet the McCartneys.
McCartney's concert at the Royal Dublin Society (RDS) stadium was his first time performing in Dublin in 40 years. RDS is one of the 22 venues that will be used during the Games; it will host powerlifting, gymnastics, bocce and table tennis competition.
"I want every young person who feels they are different, whether because of their disability or any other factor, to hold on to the fact that they too have a huge contribution to make to the world," said Mills McCartney recently in endorsing an Essex Police Authority community initiative. "I did and it worked for me."
Mills McCartney has made a career out of voluntarily counseling people from around the globe who have lost limbs in accidents, through illness, natural disasters and terrorist atrocities. She speaks from personal experience: in August 1993 she was involved in a traffic accident that resulted the loss of her left leg below the knee. Years of family difficulties, setbacks and traumas had given her the drive and determination needed to cope with becoming an amputee.
"Overcoming adversity and, ultimately, denying it the right of passage, has been a constant motivation throughout my life," she said. She is a patron of Adopt-A-Minefield and a United Nations Association Goodwill Ambassador who has tirelessly campaigned for more than11 years to raise funds and awareness to rid the world of landmines.
It is this work, and specifically her work in Croatia and Phnom Penh, Cambodia, which earned Mills McCartney a 1996 Nobel Prize nomination. Her accolades and awards have included The Gold Award for Outstanding Achievement from Former British Prime Minister John Major, the Human Achievements Award from 'The Times' of London and the British Chamber of Commerce's Outstanding Young Person of the Year Award, which was renamed The Heather Mills Award. More recently she was the recipient of Redbook magazine's Movers and Shakers Award, and of The Victory Award presented by the National Rehabilitation Hospital in Washington, DC, and recognized at the White House.
In October 2002 her updated autobiography, A Single Step, was released in North America. Her advance as well as all royalties from the book go to Adopt-A-Minefield, of which she and her husband are Patrons. The book can be purchased from most major U.S. book stores or online from Amazon.com. In it Mills McCartney speaks about her commitment to medical relief work, describing her travels and the moving encounters she has had with others who have lost limbs. She also tells of her first convoy of artificial limbs to amputees in Croatia, which she organized in 1994, and the foundation she created that brings life-changing prostheses to men, women and children in war zones around the world. To date more than 27,000 people have been helped. |
