{"id":462625,"date":"2025-09-30T08:41:10","date_gmt":"2025-09-30T08:41:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/462625\/"},"modified":"2025-09-30T08:41:10","modified_gmt":"2025-09-30T08:41:10","slug":"county-louth-tribute-to-family-after-mother-father-and-son-die","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/462625\/","title":{"rendered":"County Louth: Tribute to family after mother, father and son die"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Mr and Mrs O&#8217;Connor actively campaigned for better services for autistic people in their community. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">In 2003, they were among a small group of parents who helped to set up Drogheda Abacas Special School in County Louth and Evan was one of its first pupils.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">On its Facebook page, staff at the school paid tribute to the family, expressing the &#8220;deepest sadness&#8221; over their deaths. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;Evan attended Abacas for 14 years. He grew up with us,&#8221; the school said. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">It added that Mr and Mrs O&#8217;Connor were &#8220;passionate advocates for their son Evan and for all autistic people&#8221;.   <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;They campaigned, lobbied and fundraised for the school and youth clubs and will always be remembered for their legacy to Abacas and to autistic people.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">It said Mr O&#8217;Connor was also a board member of Autism Support Louth and Meath and worked as a &#8220;professional advocate for the rights of people with disabilities&#8221;.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mr and Mrs O&#8217;Connor actively campaigned for better services for autistic people in their community. In 2003, they&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":462626,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[12,26],"class_list":{"0":"post-462625","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world","8":"tag-news","9":"tag-world"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115292358873059711","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/462625","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=462625"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/462625\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/462626"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=462625"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=462625"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=462625"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}