I’ve had the sad situation recently where I’ve had to farewell a person I had a lot of respect for and have known throughout my working life from my original trade as an electrician through to working as a manager to now as an engineer.
But the one thing I never realised until his passing, was what an ideal role model he was…..
He was a very Christian man, but never pushed his beliefs on anyone, he was what I would idealise in a true Christian, and the lack of people like him has pushed me away from Christianity over the years.
But I really knew him best in his role as a teacher in the electrical trade where I first met him many years ago as an apprentice electrician at the age of 16. As an apprentice I only knew him as a very good teacher, little did I know then how much I would have to do with him over the years.
Later as I continued my career and moved into supervisory roles, we worked together on the Industry training advisory board, and on development of training for my electrical employees.
He was always happy and wanting to help, I can not remember a time where he ever became angry or upset, he would always be the one to calm a situation and remind everyone to “let’s not worry about that it will work itself out” or “don’t worry about that I’ll work it out”.
I was also lucky enough to get to know some of his family, who also follow in his footsteps in their open and friendly manner always wanting to help out.
As an attestment to the type of person he was, his funeral was attended by a very large number of people, the church could not fit them all, many had to stand outside where audio equipment was setup for them to hear the service.
I can only hope that I can learn to treat life as he did, always happy and not dwelling on the negatives of life only the positives, nothing was too much trouble no matter how frustrating a problem might be he worked his way through them, he helped so many people of so many walks of life from his own family, to his church, to the community, to the electrical tradespeople he helped, taught, and I hope inspired
I found his death initially very sad, losing such a wonderful man so unexpectedly and far too early, but I realised later, he had, had a wonderful life, always happy in what he was doing, with a wonderful family and many friends and able to help so many people where ever he could.
He even was able to see his family before his unexpected passing as sudden as it was, it just happened that his family happened to all catch-up with him over that weekend
So while it was a very sad time I take some comfort and I hope his family do as well, in that he lived happily doing what he wanted to….
