Dementia sufferer Mary still thinks football star brother who died of virus is still here
A heartbroken sister still asks to see her footballing legend brother at a care home where she survived the Covid outbreak which killed him. Danny McCulloch, 86, from New Cumnock in Ayrshire, was Glenafton Athletic’s greatest ever goalscorer.
He lived at the same home in the town as sister Mary Dornan, 85, and they both caught cornonavirus in May last year. Mary’s husband Patrick, 84, said: “The last 15 months has been an absolute nightmare. “Both Mary and Danny caught Covid in the care home at the same time, but Danny didn’t pull through. “Mary has dementia, she was very close to her brother and still asks for him all the time. She keeps saying she hasn’t seen him for a while and that she hopes he is ok. It is heartbreaking really. “Everyone knows who Danny was in this area and Mary was his biggest fan, so not having him around has knocked her.”
Danny was known as the “junior Puskas” after Hungarian footballing superstar Ferenc Puskas, and scored more than 300 times for Glenafton.
He was a member of the team which won three Western League Championships in a row in the early 60s after signing as an 18-year-old in 1953. Mary also lived in New Cumnock her whole life and worked in a sock factory before retiring.
Patrick, a retired miner who has been married to Mary for 64 years, added: “The Scottish Government needs to step up and put Anne’s Law in place so people like my wife are treated with the dignity that they deserve.
“I think everyone can now see that a proper public inquiry is needed to look at everything that has gone on – the sending people into care homes untested, the failure to lock down properly, the failures on the PPE.
“Everything that could be done wrong was done wrong and all these mistakes cost lives, so people need to take responsibility and learn for the future. We now know the Government was allowing Covid patients to be sent into care homes at the height of the pandemic. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that is going to end badly and we all know just how bad it did turn out.
“Now, the visiting situation needs to change. Mary has not seen her two grandchildren for 15 months and I am getting two half-hour visits a week.
“The worst thing is we just don’t know how long they will keep this up for, it feels really inhumane.”