Today I would like to present the story of yet another great Briton in Romania, as told by Peter Thomas, Head of Political Team in the British Embassy in Bucharest:
Fifth in our series of Great Britons in Romania is Sally Wood-Lamont, President of the Romanian National Paralympics Committee and founder of the Lamont Centre, a sports club for young disabled adults.
Sally’s journey to Romania can be described as either fate or pure chance. In 1990, a prominent British academic, Dennis Deletant, started a campaign to replenish Bucharest University’s library, and without her knowing Sally was elected to lead the Scottish contribution.
A self confessed “good organiser” and librarian by trade, Sally rose to the challenge and has associated herself with Romanian good causes ever since. Library books soon turned to doctors as she was tasked with setting up Scotland-Romania Medicaid, arranging three month training placements for over 330 Romanian doctors in Edinburgh and Dundee.
In December 1993, the Director of Cluj-Napoca’s Medical library asked Sally to come to Cluj to automate their collection. She jumped at the chance arranging an 18-month sabbatical from Edinburgh University and headed south to Transylvania’s largest city.
She felt at home immediately and went into overdrive, partly due to her inability to say no. Her charitable activities were endless from automating the library and training librarians to teaching disabled adults to speak English. She even acquired a bus to ferry them around town.
But her real love was always sport.
Her humble background had forced her to give up hockey aged 13 to work nights and weekends, something she clearly regrets. So when asked by one of her students if she would help fund his participation in a disabled sports competition, she jumped at the chance. One led to many, and she was soon sponsoring young disabled adults to participate in competitions all round the country, realising very soon that sport was the key to integration.
In 2000 with the help of the British Embassy she raised £7 000 to start the Lamont Centre, a sports club for young disabled adults. The initial focus was on para-table tennis. They have come a long way in that discipline: from an 11-1, 11-2 pasting in a competition in the Czech Republic to Champions of Romania in 2007.
Her reputation grew and in 2008 was asked to go as Chef de Mission to Beijing with the Romanian Paralympics team. She jumped at the chance.
In 2009 she was elected President of the Romanian National Paralympics Committee and this year proudly took the team to London, where the team through cyclist and world record holder, Eddie Novak, won a gold and a silver.
In her spare time Sally edits four medical journals and is a consultant to the library. As with everything she does, she works pro bono and takes on more and more. She has no plans to return: “Edinburgh was my birth place but Cluj is my home”.
Few Britons have ever, and will ever, give more to Romania’s underprivileged than Sally Wood-Lamont has.