A Co Antrim teacher has paid a heartfelt tribute to her dad following his death and praised his tireless work as a pioneer of cross-community youth work and Integrated education.
Roy McFaul from Larne passed peacefully away last Sunday, 18th December, at Antrim Area Hospital after a short illness, aged 73.
He is survived by his beloved wife of 40 years, Anne Marie, and was a loving father of Ciara, Joanne and the late Clare, as well as a treasured father-in-law to Karl and adored Papa of Charlotte and Conor.
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His funeral took place on Thursday at St. Anthony's Church, Craigyhill followed by burial afterwards in Larne Cemetery.
A graduate of the former teacher-training centre, St Joseph's College (now St Mary's University College) and specialising in mathematics and science, Mr McFaul taught at St Paul’s and then Corpus Christi College in West Belfast, when they amalgamated in the 1970s.
Roy's eldest daughter Ciara Hunter told Belfast Live: "Throughout his whole life, daddy proved everybody wrong and broke expectations. He had COPD but had also suffered a few TIAs (mini strokes) some years ago so he was on blood thinners.
"He took a hemorrhagic stroke on Saturday, December 10 and passed away eight days later in hospital. The hospital staff did their absolute best for him and the doctors didn't think he would make it past that first weekend but he did because he was such a force of nature."
Ciara said her father had an untold positive impact on the lives of many, through his teaching, cross-community and youth work.
"He was born and bred in Larne and while he travelled up and down to Belfast to teach, he was involved with St Anthony's Parish Youth Club at one point and organised the funding for Linn Youth Club, which he ran for many years." she said.
"Joanne, Clare and I all helped out with running the youth club tuck shop and got to mix with many others. Growing up we didn't know what a Catholic or a Protestant was because Dad didn't see it that way as it was all about young people who needed help and a safe space.
"He used the events he organised as opportunities for us to meet people that we wouldn't normally meet and learn how to work with money in the tuck shop."
Ciara added: "Dad was a pioneer in cross-community education with CRIS (Community Relations In Schools) and EMU (Education for Mutual Understanding) with his friend Ian Thompson from the beginning of The Troubles. He brought together the young people of Northern Ireland, breaking down religious barriers.
"He would take some of the most troubled young men from Corpus Christi and Larne Tech and put them in situations where they physically had to work together.
"When he took the young people canoeing on the River Bann, he'd deliberately pivot one Catholic and one Protestant in each canoe so they had to work together to ride up the river.
"To me Integrated education was the logical next step in that. For Daddy it was about recognising the differences and not treating someone differently because of it but instead celebrating and embracing it.
"People like Dad and Ian and all the others at CRIS and EMU did all the heavy work because there's no doubt that trying to do cross community work in the 1970s and 80s in Northern Ireland was a dangerous task.
"We're now taking that hard work that they did and those who started the first Integrated schools and taking it that step further now."
Ciara now teaches English and Drama at Fort Hill Integrated College in Lisburn. She says she is the teacher she is today and proudly working in integrated education, because of her father.
"When I started working in the youth club, I saw the impact that youth work can have on young people. Even before I started working in education, I gained my own youth work qualification but Daddy was very clear," Ciara explained.
"He once sat me down and said that he didn't want me following in his footsteps just because they were his footsteps. He wanted me to be sure it was what I wanted to do because he saw it as a vocation and he gave up so many evenings, weekends and summers."
Paying tribute to her dad as a family man, Ciara added: "He was a loveable rogue and a man who took us with him anywhere he could so he was a huge part of our childhood.
"Back in the 80s he would take kids from the school over to Belgium and Holland in the summers as part of a summer scheme and while he couldn't take us on those, we would be taken to Dundonald Ice Bowl, Portrush and basically anywhere the youth club went, he came too.
"Even though he spent a lot of his time working with other young people, the stories we have are hilarious because he was such a character."
Just over two years ago, Mr McFaul's youngest daughter Clare died after collapsing at her Larne home during a Zumba workout.
Family members performed CPR before paramedics took the 32-year-old to hospital where doctors later discovered that Clare had suffered "catastrophic injuries" following a brain bleed.
She died two days later on August 6 2020 and her family made the decision to donate her organs, which changed the lives of five other people.
Clare had suffered a stroke at the age of 11, on the day she received her transfer test results. The youngster was taken to hospital where doctors discovered that she had blood vessels on her spine which were weak and bursting and had caused the stroke and she was suffering from a condition called AV Malformation.
She was transferred from Belfast to John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford where a Northern Ireland-born surgeon, for the first time, performed an operation using glue to block the vessels.
Clare was in a wheelchair for a time afterwards and lived the rest of her life with a weakness down her left side.
Despite her condition she finished grammar school and graduated with a Business IT degree from Queen's University Belfast.
"We lost Clare just over two years ago and that hit Daddy really hard and since then, he physically just wasn't the same. It took a lot out of him but at least he's with Clare now," Ciara added.
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