Eric Montgomery, who joined the Northern Ireland Civil Service during the 1950s, went on to become director of information at Stormont for several decades until 1976 when he retired from the service to establish and run a remarkably imaginative folk park near Omagh.
He was to write later: "If I am remembered for anything, it will probably be for founding the Ulster American Folk Park", but he was additionally involved in a number of other significant and positive developments in Northern Ireland during his long life.
Born in Moy, Co Tyrone, in 1916, the son of a Methodist minister who was later appointed president of the Methodist Church in Ireland, he was educated at Methodist College, Belfast, and Trinity College Dublin. He started work as a trainee journalist with the Impartial Reporter, Enniskillen, and later with the Banbridge Chronicle, an experience of some significance for his later career.
He joined the Royal Irish Fusiliers in 1940 and, because he took a special interest in armour, he was posted to the US where he was assigned to the British Military Mission in Washington to negotiate and oversee the delivery of tanks and other military equipment to Britain. Shortly after being awarded the MBE (Military Division), he retired with the rank of major and, after joining the Northern Ireland Civil Service, became responsible for the establishment of the Government Information Service in Belfast.
At this time, when not one Roman Catholic was employed at Stormont Castle, Eric Montgomery recruited, on merit, an able Catholic journalist, the first to be employed in the prime minister's department.
During this latter period, he set up the first transport museum in Ireland at a time when many railway lines were being closed and much unique rolling stock was being scrapped. Many of the items then saved were to become the nucleus of the fine transport museum established since then at Cultra, Co Down.
He was largely responsible for the establishment of the Ulster American Historical Foundation, and under his direction Enterprise Young Ulster was established to provide job opportunities and training for unemployed people. He also organised the staging of a series of "Ulster Weeks" to boost Northern Ireland trade in the major British cities, and these continued successfully until threats from the IRA effectively ended them.
He arranged "Ulster 71", a huge exposition held in Belfast which, despite the fact that the city was being seriously affected by paramilitary activity, attracted an attendance of almost three-quarters of a million visitors during its three-month lifespan. More recently, he initiated the North-West Passage tourist route from Dublin to Donegal, supported by both the NI Tourist Board and Bord Fáilte, as well as all the counties through which the route passes.
Prompted by his earlier experiences in the US, Eric Montgomery embarked on a programme of restoring some of the ancestral homes of the 12 US presidents who had Ulster roots.
Before retiring from the civil service in 1976 he had become involved in the restoration of the ancestral home of the Mellon banking family of Pittsburgh.
While this work was ongoing, he was telephoned by Matthew Mellon, the head of the family, who expressed a wish to help with the project, the upshot of which was a cheque for $250,000. The Mellon family formed part of the significant emigration of Ulster Protestants - often referred to as the Scotch-Irish - which took place before the emigration that resulted from the Famine years.
As a result of this generous financial gesture he threw his whole energy into developing an extensive outdoor museum centred on the Mellon thatched farmhouse. Various old buildings were transported from different parts of the province and re-erected in a new folk park in Co Tyrone to depict what life was like in Ireland when the Mellon family emigrated early in the 19th century.
A range of log cabins and similar buildings, along with a fine example of a covered wagon of the period, were brought from the US to show what lay in store for emigrants at that time.
The Ulster American Folk Park is now recognised, along with the Ulster Museum and the Ulster Folk and Transport Museum, as one of the three major museums in Northern Ireland, and in recognition of this achievement and his other endeavours, Eric Montgomery received the OBE in 1991.
He died aged 87 after a short illness and is survived by his wife, Joan, and their son Nigel.