Career
In the Second World War, she joined the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry before switching to the Auxiliary Territorial Service. In Dublin for a race meeting in 1939, she met and soon married Irish fertiliser manufacturer and art collector Sir Basil Goulding, 3rd Baronet and moved to Ireland. However, her husband moved to England to join the RAF, ending the war as a wing commander; meanwhile, she served as a second lieutenant in the British Army. After the war, the couple returned to Ireland, where Sir Basil and his family managed Goulding Chemicals.
In 1951, she co-founded, with Kathleen O'Rourke, the Central Remedial Clinic in a couple of rooms in central Dublin, to provide non-residential care for disabled people. The Clinic later moved to a purpose building in Clontarf in 1968. The Clinic's foundation initiated a revolution in the treatment of physical disability and rapidly grew to by far the largest centre dealing with the needs of disabled people. Lady Goulding remained chairman and managing director of the CRC until 1984.
On account of her widespread popularity, in 1977 she was nominated by the Taoiseach, Jack Lynch, to Seanad Éireann, where she worked to raise awareness of disability issues. She sought election to Dáil Éireann twice as a Fianna Fáil candidate, both times unsuccessfully. She was spoken of as a possible President of Ireland in 1983, along with former Nobel and Lenin Peace Prize winner Sean MacBride and former head of the International Olympic Committee Lord Killanin, should the president, Patrick Hillery, decline to seek a second term. (Hillery ultimately was re-elected).
Read more about this topic: Valerie Goulding
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