TOM WILMOT:SIXTY YEARS ago Tom Wilmot, who has died aged 90, established the first ear, nose and throat (ENT) service in Northern Ireland outside Belfast. When he arrived at Omagh's Tyrone County Hospital there was no ENT department, no ward, no nurse and no instruments.
Over the next years, he was central to building up that department. He established an audiology unit to deal with hearing, balance, and related disorders. Usually, clinics in country hospitals were held by consultants from city hospitals. Reversing that trend, he provided vertigo clinics at hospitals in Belfast and Derry.
Wilmot proved expertise could be developed outside of big hospitals in cities. In 1973 he was elected president of the otology section of the London-based Royal Society of Medicine, the first person from Ireland to be so honoured. In 1981, he became president of the Irish Otolaryngology Society. He shared his expertise by writing some 30 research papers.
Outside work, Tom Wilmot’s big passion was fishing. “He would have fished in a puddle in the road,” is how one friend’s judgment. That passion made him passionate about protecting the environment. Thus, in the early 1990s, he was a founder member of the Gold Mine Action Group in Omagh that opposed the excavation of an open-cast gold mine.
Thomas James (Tom) Wilmot was born in Nottingham in 1920. He was the third of four children to Thomas Wilmot and his wife Betty (née MacLean). Thomas Wilmot was a general practitioner. This Thomas’ father, also Thomas, had been the engineer who oversaw the completion of the trans-Atlantic telegraph cable from Nova Scotia to Waterville. Betty was from Inverness in Scotland.
When Tom was a child the family moved to Louth, Lincolnshire. He was educated at Lydgate House preparatory school in Hunstanton, Norfolk; then Epsom College; then studied medicine at the University of London. After graduation, he did two years National Service in the Royal Air Force. Through all, he was a keen sportsman. At Lydgate, he was Victor Ludorum (champion all-round sportsman). He boxed for London University and later became a dedicated archer.
His love of fishing led him to ask to be buried in the graveyard of Badoney Presbyterian Church, in the foothills of the Sperrins. This is beside The Gaff fishery, where he spent many hours.
He is survived by his wife, Ivy, children Heather and Tom, stepson Ian, five grandchildren and three great-grandchildren. He was predeceased by his first wife, Patricia.
Tom Wilmot:born June 5th, 1920; died March 31st, 2011