Patrick Culleton, who has died aged 62, was an Irish immigrant who became an inspirational and transformative figure in and around Boston after he was paralysed during a rugby match in 1991.
Culleton, known as Punter to his friends, was born and reared in Kilbride, Co Kilkenny. He was educated at Ballyfacey National School in Glenmore and studied for his Leaving Certificate in Waterford. During those years he was very active with Glenmore GAA, playing football and hurling.
He studied teaching at University College Cork then moved to Dublin. He joined Bective Rangers Rugby Football Club in Donnybrook, where his interest in rugby blossomed.
After travelling to the US one summer, he made the move permanent in 1988, settling in Boston. The following year, his twin brother John was badly injured when he was struck by a car while visiting Boston.
Two years later, Culleton was struck down while playing in a pre-season friendly on the Massachusetts island of Martha’s Vineyard. He became trapped in a ruck and was paralysed from the neck down.
“It’s bad,” Culleton told Tom O’Brien, a native of Mayo, who was the first teammate at his side. “Don’t let anyone touch me. My life is at stake.”
He was right. Culleton embarked on a long rehabilitation and recovery, and was eventually able to use a motorised wheelchair. He was still in his Boston hospital room when one of the Birmingham Six, Paddy Joe Hill, strolled in for a visit.
“I’ll tell you something,” Hill said, on the elevator after a long conversation with Culleton, “that lad is special. He’ll do great things.”
Culleton became the greatest ambassador for the game that rugby had ever seen in Boston. The rugby community, and the wider community, rallied around him to help set up and pay for his care. As a result of his injury, his teammates decided the Boston Irish Wolfhounds Rugby Football Club had to become a bigger, more influential club, in part so Culleton would have an expanded role in it.
For the last quarter century, Punter Culleton graced the rugby grounds at the Irish Cultural Centre in Canton, just outside Boston. Young players paid him homage, sought his counsel, and laughed at his self-deprecating jokes. The Wolfhounds became one of the premier clubs in North America, and Culleton remained one of its driving forces.
“We joined him on the journey, armed with his gigantic personality,” said Rossa McDermott, a friend and former teammate.
Culleton didn’t inspire pity as much as perspective.
“I’m still on the right side of the grass,” he liked to say.
Culleton didn’t complain about his injury and didn’t suffer those who patronised him.
In 2012, Steve Durant, a psychologist at Massachusetts General Hospital, suffered an agonising injury while playing for the Wolfhounds. An opposing player who tried to rip the ball from him instead ripped into his left eye, blinding him. Durant looked up with his good eye and saw his friend Culleton looking down at him from his wheelchair.
Durant never played again, and never complained about his injury.
“Punter gave me, and so many others, strength and perspective,” Durant said.
Culleton’s friends, especially those from the rugby community, remained a big part of his life in the years after his injury. When his mother Maggie died in 2009, he couldn’t go back to Ireland for her funeral. So his friends came to him, cramming into his apartment in Newton to hold a Mass for her.
After Culleton died of complications from a surgery meant to improve his quality of life, hundreds of people attended his wake in Boston and a celebration of his life at a restaurant owned by Joe Greene, one of his teammates who was on the pitch with him on Martha’s Vineyard when he was paralysed.
A number of his friends and former teammates accompanied his body back to Kilkenny for his funeral and burial.
“He lived a really great life, no matter what the challenges,” said O’Brien. “He taught us, all of us, about what really matters. What a gift he was.”
He is survived by his sisters, Mary and Josie, and his brothers, John and Seamus.