Eva Loeffler gave a fascinating talk about her involvement with the Paralympic movement and in particular the 2012 event which brought the games to a huge audience on TV. Daughter of Sir Ludwig Guttmann, founder of the Paralympic movement, Eva was one of the first Directors of the British Paralympic Association. She had the honour of being Mayor of the Paralympic Village in London 2012.

Eva explained that the Paralympic games have had enormous consequences for people with disabilities across the world. In China, for example, before the 2008 games disabled people did not leave their homes; it was only because China was determined to have the highest medal count that they searched out and trained their disabled athletes.  This led to a much greater acceptance of all people with disabilities.

Eva’s involvement with the Paralympic movement carried on from the work of her father Ludwig Guttmann, a brilliant neurologist and neurosurgeon who had had to flee Germany in 1939 because he was Jewish. Eva described how the Guttmann family managed to get to England in March 1939, leaving behind close family members who they never saw again. They arrived in England penniless. Eva and her brother were immediately sent to school where they had to learn English quickly.

Eva talked about how her father developed the spinal injuries unit at Stoke Mandeville Hospital and how this eventually led to the first Paralymic games. She said that at that time – it was 1944 – people with injuries to the spinal cord were not expected to survive very long. Under her father’s direction the centre developed a new scheme of physical and mental rehabilitation; this demonstrated that competitive physical activities were an enormous aid to recovery for young disabled ex-servicemen.

The Stoke Mandeville wheelchair games became international in 1952 but it was after the Rome Olympics in 1960 that 400 wheelchair athletes from many countries took part in the games for the first time. In 1966 Ludwig Guttmann, already a Fellow of the Royal Society, received a knighthood from the Queen. He died in 1980 having done an enormous amount to enable people with disabilities to take part in wider society.

Eva’s involvement with the Paralympic games began when she was asked to become one of the first directors of the British Paralympic Association. Her talk at WISE stressed the importance of the Paralympic games for children with disabilities, allowing them to take part in a wide variety of sports. Eva showed a slide of her carrying an Olympic torch in the procession at the 2012 games and of a bike race past Buckingham Palace. It was especially poignant when another WISE member talked about her own father, who had come back from the Second World War for treatment at Stoke Mandeville, and how his time there was vital to his recovery.

Eva’s talk underlined how a step forward in one area of life – better treatment for people with spinal injuries – spread to a worldwide movement which has changed attitudes and enabled people with disabilities to play a much wider part in society.