A Mearns community stalwart and former environmental campaigner has died after falling from her horse and suffering a head injury.
Christina Sullivan, 73, was on a horse at a stables near to her home in Rickarton, a few miles west of Stonehaven, when the tragic accident happened last Wednesday.
Despite paramedics’ best efforts, the experienced horsewoman died before she got to hospital.
She had for many years been a central figure in community life, working with Stonehaven’s twinning committee and helping to organise events.
Husband Mike, a former Lib Dem councillor, said that the mother-of-one would be missed “enormously”.
Mr Sullivan, who suffers from Parkinson’s disease, said: “She was loved by everyone.
“She was very interested in the local community and spent a lot of time working with the community council.
“She was a very politically-motivated person you could say and very keen on CND. We went to demonstrations many times. She was just an altogether interested activist.
“As well as this she loved animals, was a philanthropist and had four grandchildren in Denmark who she loved spending time with.
“She was a very fine character and I will miss her enormously.”
Born in Denmark in 1945, Mrs Sullivan had a son, Peter, from an earlier marriage.
She was a part of the famous Greenham Common peace camp in the early 1980s.
The all-female demonstrators hit the headlines after they pitched-up outside an RAF base in Berkshire to protest cruise missiles being stationed at the site.
She met her second husband, who had served in the Royal Navy, in Malta in 1981.
They would get married in 1988 in Oxfordshire by which point Mr Sullivan was working as a commercial airline pilot. That job would later take him to the north-east.
Mrs Sullivan lectured at Aberdeen University where she taught English to foreign students, retiring about a decade ago.
Latterly, she cared for her husband following his diagnosis.
Mrs Sullivan was an engaged member of the community council and played a key role in the recent twinning project with the French town Acheres, even accommodating one of the delegates in her house.
She also played a big part in organising the New Year’s Day Nippy Dip.
Phil Mills Bishop was chairman of the community council when she joined and is the current head of the twinning group.
He said: “She was always so helpful and extremely supportive – one of those great community minded people who didn’t ever want any recognition for her actions.
“I just saw her at the weekend and she had been hosting one of the French delegates from Acheres. We will all miss her terribly.”
