Despite spending most of his long life in the US, Paul O'Dwyer never lost his connection with Ireland, and in particular with his native Mayo. The youngest of 11 children whose parents were teachers, he left the county in 1925 to follow his older brothers to New York, where he qualified as a lawyer. He used his profession to fight for all those he perceived as disadvantaged both in his adopted country and further afield.
By the 1960s he had established a reputation as one of the leading civil rights lawyers in the US. But he was a frequent visitor to Ireland, and in 1968 first entered on a cherished project: using the site of the old family home in Bohola, Co Mayo, as a home for those marginalised in Irish society.
In a meeting with the then Taoiseach, Mr Jack Lynch, he discussed his plan to set up a home there for mentally handicapped children. Eventually, however, it was a Cheshire Home for physically handicapped adults which was established.
He also became interested at this time in an area which would involve his energies for the rest of his life, Northern Ireland. In 1969 he stopped off in Ireland on a trip to Geneva, where he was representing the New York Committee for Human Rights for Nigeria-Biafra, to meet Northern Irish civil rights groups.
His support for the civil rights movement, and later the republican movement, in the North brought him into public conflict with Dr Conor Cruise O'Brien, with whom he exchanged correspondence in the columns of The Irish Times. "It is obvious that your definition of causative violence and mine have come to differ of late," he wrote. "Violence is the treatment of your fellow man with derision and contempt. Violence is proclaiming him to be inferior."
In 1974 he was Mayoman of the Year and also cut the sod for the building of the Cheshire Home in Bohola, which was to cost £150,000, of which he had raised £55,000 in the US. "I'm happy that I can do something for people who have not been too fortunate in life," he said. "I had thought of selling the place to one of my neighbours. They all wanted it. The trouble was that they are all either relatives or friends of mine, and if I had sold it I would have one doubtful friend and 16 enemies."
Although he was sympathetic to the republican movement, he also met loyalists, and in 1978 had discussions over a three-week period with both loyalist and republican paramilitaries. He hoped that one of the proposals to emerge from these contacts - an independent Ulster with guarantees for nationalists - would provide a basis for peace, but nothing came of it.
In 1981 he backed the issuing of a visa for the Rev Ian Paisley to visit the US.
He continued to raise money for the Cheshire Home, and was also involved in founding the Irish Institute, a cultural organisation, in New York.
In 1994 he was interviewed for The Irish Times by Eileen Battersby, who wrote: "To an American ear, after almost 70 years O'Dwyer's soft voice still sounds Irish."
He told her he felt Irish, "but I also feel very, very American."