The passing of Thomas Wilmot Jnr, the owner of Bundoran Adventure Park, has sent shockwaves through south Donegal and beyond this month.
Mr Wilmot, of Kinlough, Co. Leitrim passed unexpectedly on Monday 11th December aged 55. He was laid to rest today in Stirling, Scotland.
He will be sadly missed and forever remembered by his loving partner Eimear Dunne, sons Josh and Lewis, parents Thomas and Muriel and all his relatives, neighbours and many friends.
The following article was contributed by Paul McLoone, Ballyshannon:
The sad passing of Thomas Wilmot on the 11 Dec last sent shockwaves throughout the North West. Thomas was well known as the genial face of the Adventure Park on the seafront in Bundoran.
Originally from Scotland Thomas first visited Bundoran 30 years ago when he received a tip off that Bundoran was crying out for new rides at the fun fair then owned by the Harrison family. He came over ‘cold turkey’, introduced himself and worked in partnership with the Harrisons before his company eventually bought over the Park several years later.
There was much talk in recent times about immigrants to Ireland. An immigrant is described as a person who comes to live permanently in a foreign country.
Thomas was one of the first immigrants to Bundoran and only last week the Taoiseach publicly acknowledged that the country had benefitted so much from migration many of whom had contributed enormously to enhancing the lives of residents and communities.
We were extremely fortunate that Thomas chose South Donegal as his destination of choice as his contribution to this region in the intervening years is immeasurable. Not only did he grow the economy of the region, create jobs and enhance the tourism experience for visitors to Bundoran but he became a friend to many of us and greatly enriched our lives by simply being one of us.
He was a quietly spoken entrepreneur as his modus operandi was that you didn’t have to be the loudest voice in the room to make a difference. His listening skills were one of his strengths and he often observed that the best thing you can do is to turn down the volume so that you can actually hear what others are saying.
At the time of his passing, and in line with the County Development Plan and the Bundoran Tourism Masterplan, Thomas had ambitious plans to extend the Adventure Park as Bundoran’s premium family fun area and turn it into a small theme park. His plans included growing the park with 50 activities and rides many of them enclosed. His target was to grow visitor numbers to over 200,000 per annum and to double the workforce in the Park.
Thomas Wilmot, Bundoran Adventure Park
He spent his life in the adventure park business, managing adventure parks, amusement parks and fun fairs both in Ireland and the UK. He has been managing and developing the Adventure Park in Bundoran since the early 1990s.
Over the years he has added major attractions to the Park increasing the attractiveness and trebling the number of visitors to it. He invested millions of Euros in the past number of years to bring the Park to today’s state of development. The Park is run from March to September and as a result contributes much more in added value to the town of Bundoran.
Thomas was also a very generous man, very caring and understanding of the big issues facing all of us. We ran a cancer awareness event in the Abbey Centre, Ballyshannon on May 13th last with the aim of raising awareness of the support services available locally for people encountering difficulties because of a cancer diagnosis. He approached us to say he wanted to help and that this message needed to be relayed to a much wider audience. Accordingly he arranged that Ocean FM do a live two hour broadcast from the event and just quietly paid for that himself. This is just one example of his many acts of generosity over the years which included supporting a plethora of charities, sporting organizations and schools in the local area.
He did a piece to camera at the cancer event where he spoke about men’s health and the need to look after ourselves as we (men) tended to put things on the long finger. There is a well known quote that says we cannot throw out a single page of our life but we can throw the whole book in the fire.
There is no grief like the grief that does not speak, as the life of the dead is placed in the memory of the living. When someone you love becomes a memory, the memory becomes a treasure.
Thomas’s funeral service took place in his native Scotland on the morning of Friday 22nd December.
God bless you Thomas may you rest in peace.
