SHEILA Eileen Murray was born in London in 1934 and moved to Bournemouth with her mother and two sisters five years later when her father was called up to serve in the Second World War.

She attended The Convent of the Cross in Boscombe, now the Anglo-European College of Chiropractic, excelled in language-based subjects and qualified as a teacher at Digby Stuart College in Roehampton.

Following this, Sheila became a primary school teacher at St John’s School in Boscombe and was also well-known for her youth work.

In the early 1960s, with a £4 donation and a record player, Sheila reopened the Corpus Christi Youth Club, which she had frequented as a teenager.

It relocated to Sacred Heart Church on Richmond Hill and the Catacomb Club was born.

Sheila, who saw a need to address the town’s growing drug problem, worked with others to help young people with addictions and was soon nominated as Catholic Woman of the Year.

In the early 1970s Sheila became the first ever student counsellor at Bournemouth and Poole College, later Bournemouth University.

She trained in London to gain her counselling qualifications and broaden her skills to help others and, in the early 1980s set up WesBac, to support the development, supervision and training of counsellors in the Dorset area. Continuing in private practice until 2000, Sheila was counsellor and mentor to hundreds of people of all ages; their problems ranging from drug, alcohol and substance abuse to relationship problems and other personality disorders.

She was first diagnosed with cancer in 1999 but overcame the disease to enjoy retirement with her husband Michael. A second cancer proved inoperable, and then in March last year she suffered a stroke and moved to Muscliffe Nursing Home. She died, aged 78, earlier this month.

Family, including her two children and four grandchildren, paid tribute to a strong happy woman who was always more concerned for those who loved her than for herself.