For the Columbia astronauts: 'The final days of their own lives were spent looking down upon this Earth', by George W. Bush - 2003

4 February 2003, National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA) Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, USA

The crew that died in the STS-107 Space Shuttle Columbia were –David M. Brown, Rick D. Husband, Laurel B. Clark, Kalpana Chawla, Michael P. Anderson, William C. McCool and Ilan Ramon.

Their mission was almost complete, and we lost them so close to home. The men and women of the Columbia had journeyed more than 6 million miles and were minutes away from arrival and reunion. The loss was sudden and terrible, and for their families, the grief is heavy. Our nation shares in your sorrow and in your pride. And today we remember not only one moment of tragedy, but seven lives of great purpose and achievement.

To leave behind Earth and air and gravity is an ancient dream of humanity. For these seven, it was a dream fulfilled. Each of these astronauts had the daring and discipline required of their calling. Each of them knew that great endeavors are inseparable from great risks. And each of them accepted those risks willingly, even joyfully, in the cause of discovery.

Rick Husband was a boy of four when he first thought of being an astronaut. As a man, and having become an astronaut, he found it was even more important to love his family and serve his Lord. One of Rick’s favorite hymns was, “How Great Thou Art,” which offers these words of praise: “I see the stars. I hear the mighty thunder. Thy power throughout the universe displayed.”

David Brown was first drawn to the stars as a little boy with a telescope in his back yard. He admired astronauts, but, as he said, “I thought they were movie stars. I thought I was kind of a normal kid.” David grew up to be a physician, an aviator who could land on the deck of a carrier in the middle of the night, and a shuttle astronaut.

His brother asked him several weeks ago what would happen if something went wrong on their mission. David replied, “This program will go on.”

Michael Anderson always wanted to fly planes, and rose to the rank of Lt. Colonel in the Air Force. Along the way, he became a role model — especially for his two daughters and for the many children he spoke to in schools. He said to them, “Whatever you want to be in life, you’re training for it now.” He also told his minister, “If this thing doesn’t come out right, don’t worry about me, I’m just going on higher.”

Laurel Salton Clark was a physician and a flight surgeon who loved adventure, loved her work, loved her husband and her son. A friend who heard Laurel speaking to Mission Control said, “There was a smile in her voice.”

Laurel conducted some of the experiments as Columbia orbited the Earth, and described seeing new life emerge from a tiny cocoon. “Life,” she said, “continues in a lot of places, and life is a magical thing.”

None of our astronauts traveled a longer path to space than Kalpana Chawla. She left India as a student, but she would see the nation of her birth, all of it, from hundreds of miles above. When the sad news reached her home town, an administrator at her high school recalled, “She always said she wanted to reach the stars. She went there, and beyond.” Kalpana’s native country mourns her today, and so does her adopted land.

Ilan Ramon also flew above his home, the land of Israel. He said, “The quiet that envelopes space makes the beauty even more powerful. And I only hope that the quiet can one day spread to my country.” Ilan was a patriot; the devoted son of a holocaust survivor, served his country in two wars. “Ilan,” said his wife, Rona, “left us at his peak moment, in his favorite place, with people he loved.”

The Columbia’s pilot was Commander Willie McCool, whom friends knew as the most steady and dependable of men. In Lubbock today they’re thinking back to the Eagle Scout who became a distinguished Naval officer and a fearless test pilot. One friend remembers Willie this way: “He was blessed, and we were blessed to know him.”

Our whole nation was blessed to have such men and women serving in our space program. Their loss is deeply felt, especially in this place, where so many of you called them friends. The people of NASA are being tested once again. In your grief, you are responding as your friends would have wished — with focus, professionalism, and unbroken faith in the mission of this agency.

Captain Brown was correct: America’s space program will go on. This cause of exploration and discovery is not an option we choose; it is a desire written in the human heart. We are that part of creation which seeks to understand all creation. We find the best among us, send them forth into unmapped darkness, and pray they will return. They go in peace for all mankind, and all mankind is in their debt.

Yet, some explorers do not return. And the loss settles unfairly on a few. The families here today shared in the courage of those they loved. But now they must face life and grief without them. The sorrow is lonely; but you are not alone. In time, you will find comfort and the grace to see you through. And in God’s own time, we can pray that the day of your reunion will come.

And to the children who miss your Mom or Dad so much today, you need to know, they love you, and that love will always be with you. They were proud of you. And you can be proud of them for the rest of your life.

The final days of their own lives were spent looking down upon this Earth. And now, on every continent, in every land they could see, the names of these astronauts are known and remembered. They will always have an honored place in the memory of this country. And today I offer the respect and gratitude of the people of the United States.

May God bless you all.

From left to right: Brown, Husband, Clark, Chawla, Anderson, McCool, Ramon

For Queen's Mother, Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon: 'A woman of grace', by Geroge Carey - 2002

9 April 2002, Westminster Abbey, London, United Kingdom

We gather in this great Abbey to mourn and to give thanks. It is a fitting place to do so, a place where the story of our nation and the story of the woman we now commend to her Heavenly Father are intertwined.

It was here that Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon was married and became Duchess of York; it was here that she was crowned Queen; it was here that, as Queen Mother, she attended the coronation of her own daughter. It is fitting, then, that a place that stood at the centre of her life should now be the place where we honour her passing.

In the 10 days since she left us, there have been countless tributes and expressions of affection and respect — including those of the many people who have queued and filed patiently past her coffin lying-in-state.

How should we explain the numbers? Not just by the great length of a life, famously lived to the full. It has to do with her giving of herself so readily and openly.

There was about her, in George Eliot’s lovely phrase, “the sweet presence of a good diffused”.

Like the sun, she bathed us in her warm glow. Now that the sun has set and the cool of the evening has come, some of the warmth we absorbed is flowing back towards her.

If there is one verse of scripture which captures her best, it is perhaps the description of a gracious woman in the final chapter of the book of Proverbs. It says: “Strength and dignity are her clothing and she laughs at the time to come.”

Strength, dignity and laughter — three great gifts which we honour and celebrate today.

The Queen Mother’s strength as a person was expressed best through the remarkable quality of her dealings with people — her ability to make all human encounters, however fleeting, feel both special and personal.

As her eighth Archbishop of Canterbury, I can vouch for that strength.

Something of it is reflected in the fact that for half a century we knew her and understood her as the Queen Mother. It is a title whose resonance lies less in its official status than in expressing one of the most fundamental of all roles and relationships — that of simply being a mother, a mum, the Queen Mum.

For her family, that maternal strength — given across the generations to children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren — has been a precious gift and blessing.

Its loss is felt keenly today. And as they grieve, we say to the Queen and to Prince Philip; to Charles, Anne, Andrew, Edward, David and Sarah as grandchildren; and to all their children: you are in our thoughts and cradled in our prayers and those of countless millions round the world.

The very first letter Elizabeth wrote on becoming Queen in the traumatic and daunting circumstances of 1936 was to one of my predecessors as Archbishop of Canterbury. It gives a further insight into the source of her strength.

She wrote: “I can hardly believe that we have been called to this tremendous task… and the curious thing is we are not afraid.”

With her openness to people, indeed as part of it, came a quiet courage. A courage manifest in wartime and widowhood, a courage that endured to the end.

Strength, dignity and laughter.

There was certainly nothing remote or distant about her own sense of dignity. Her smile, her wave, the characteristic tilt of her head: all made the point immediately and beyond words. It was a dignity that rested not on the splendid trappings of royalty, but on a sense of the nobility of service.

On their wedding day here, the Archbishop of York spoke to the newly married couple of their life together: “We cannot resolve that it shall be happy,” he said, “but you can and will resolve that it shall be noble.”

And indeed it was. An unfailing sense of service and duty made it so. It was a commitment nourished by the Queen Mother’s Christian faith. A faith that told her, as it tells us all, that even the Son of God came into the world as a servant, not as a master.

Strength, dignity and, yes, laughter.

We come here to mourn but also to give thanks, to celebrate the person and her life — both filled with such a rich sense of fun and joy and the music of laughter.

With it went an immense vitality that did not fail her. Hers was a great old age, but not a cramped one. She remained young at heart, and the young themselves sensed that.

Of course, the laughter of the book of Proverbs goes deeper than a good joke or a witty reply. “She laughs at the time to come”: such laughter reflects an attitude of confident hope in the face of adversity and the unpredictable challenges of life.

Of this laughter too, the Queen Mother knew a great deal. It was rooted in the depth and simplicity of her abiding faith that this life is to be lived to the full as a preparation for the next.

Her passing was truly an Easter death — poised between Good Friday and Easter Day. In the light of the promise that Easter brings, we will lay her to rest knowing that the same hope belongs to all who trust in the One who is the resurrection and the life.

Strength, dignity, laughter — three special qualities, earthed in her Christian faith. Qualities that clothed her life so richly. Qualities that with her passing, we too — by the grace of God — may seek to put on afresh, in our own lives and the life of our nation and world. Let that be part of her legacy, part of our tribute.

And lastly this: for the book of Proverbs has more to say about a gracious woman; words we can summon now as we commend to her Heavenly Father his faithful servant Elizabeth — Queen, Queen Mother, Queen Mum — deeply loved and greatly missed.

It simply says of a woman of grace: “Many have done excellently, but you exceed them all

for Ron Blainey: 'I’d like to think he’s gone where the Calathumpians go', by Trevor Blainey - 2020

31 January 2020, Tobin Brothers, Doncaster, Melbourne, Australia

Early Days

Dad was born on 26th October 1931 to Robert James Wesley Blainey and Ivy Isobel Blainey in a hospital in Moreland Road in the then Vaucluse Hospital, now Brunswick Private. A child during the war, too young to serve, but not too young to be affected by it. In his early days he lived in Brunswick and in due course he went to Brunswick South PS.

Later the family moved to West Preston and he started secondary school at Northcote High. There, dad is a capable student and good athlete excelling in maths, track and field and the weird version of mortal combat known as Lacrosse. A minor sport then and still that way now, it had its origins in Canada and North America developed by their indigenous peoples and was introduced into Australia by a Canadian in the late 19th Century. A sport of speed, agility and violence, Dad loved it. And excelled at it. He played from his pre-teens until his early 30’s. Again, he loved it.

Lacrosse

While at Northcote High Dad met friends that he’d have for life including in particular Reg Ratcliffe and Wes George. The school was one of a handful in the North and another few in the East that had Lacrosse teams and these mates took it up with gusto. They later played together for Coburg, a team that was affiliated with the Coburg Harriers, an athletics club and those clubs had playing fields and aths tracks that are still there and in use today. McDonald’s Reserve in Bell Street in the shadows of the infamous Blue Stone College aka Her Majesty’s Prison, Pentridge. The Coburg Lacrosse team was where he met David Jackson, Graeme Reid, Don Stapleton and Nobby O’Brien all lifelong mates. Dad ran for the Harriers in the summer and played Lacrosse in winter. His forte in aths was then called the Hop, Step and Jump and is now known as the Triple Jump. He was a State Junior champ at that but also competed at a high level in the hurdles and the sprints.

His Dad

Sadly an event that would have a profound effect on Dad then and for much of the remainder of his life happened soon after he started High School. When he was 12 his father, the archetypal soldier of fortune, left for Sydney to drive Taxis. US forces were stationed there while the War in the Pacific was in full swing. They had money to spend, economically times were tough in Melbourne and he took off never to return. In his late teens when dad was competing in a National Aths Championship in Sydney he looked him up but I can only assume that that proved to be a disappointing encounter. Dad never saw his father again after the age of 19. Much later in life for reasons that are reasonably easy to guess at Dad became interested in the family tree. He was delivered another shattering blow when in 1994 he discovered that his father had passed away in 1971.

Which leads me to what I regard as the central motif of my father’s life. His love of family and his resolve, never shaken, that, not on his watch, would such a thing happen to anyone in his care. This was the Signifying Event in dad’s life.

Family

A direct result of his dad’s departure was that my father was now the child of a single mum, the redoubtable Ivy (my Nana), who then went to work in retail at Coles. With a 12 YO boy to look after. As the proverb goes It Takes a Village. Nana’s family swung into action. Her brother Murray Exelby, a lifelong bachelor, moved into the family home in West Preston. Another income, a bit of rent. Her sister Grace’s family, the Wilsons, became a de facto surrogate family, minded him after school, fed him and looked out for him. And another brother Les offered Dad his first job. At the age of just 14, somewhat forced by circumstance dad left school and went to work for Uncle Les. Selling women’s lingerie. Not kidding. Heady days I daresay.

Work

But that wasn’t dad’s forte. At school it had been sport and maths and English and trade related subjects. He loved fixing things, seeing how they worked. So another family member, Les Chapple, offered dad a job at his small engineering factory in Preston. Chapple Brothers, a family business. Dad loved it, loved working with the uncles and their sons, his cousins. But he could see the value in getting a qualification, having missed out on proceeding to tertiary because of his early exit from school and, in those days, because working class boys didn’t go to Uni as readily as now. So he went to night school to RMIT to get a Boilermakers ticket which he duly completed. A Boilermaker. An old skill. It’s sheet metal work. Boilermakers assemble, maintain and repair large vessels and enclosed vats.

Mum

Now while all of this running and jumping and medieval violence involving sticks (Lacrosse) and learning and earning is going on I can hear you say “What of love Trev? When did he meet your mum?”. At age 17 Dad’s mate from NHS, Reg, invited Dad to a Mystery Picnic. Mum’s friend from up the street, Beverley invited mum to the same outing. Reg and Bev were boyfriend and girlfriend. Can you see where this is heading? A Mystery Picnic has a group gather at a location, get picked up by a furniture van fitted out for passengers (not very safely I wouldn’t have thought) and taken to a mystery picnic spot. In this case Canadian Bay, a small beach near Mount Eliza. Now at 17 Dad was shy, at least around girls. It was a hot day and his concession to the heat was a short sleeved shirt. But long pants and shoes. Wouldn’t doff his kit into his swimmers. Reckoned his legs were too skinny. But a walk along the beach seemed OK. And thus started a love that remained undiminished from that day until now. Pretty good by any measure.

On the 27th February 1954 Ron Blainey of West Preston and June Chadwick of West Heidelberg were married at St Patrick’s Cathedral in bright sunshine on a perfect day. Reg Ratcliffe was Dad’s groomsman, as Dad was his. A mixed marriage. Mum, a good catholic girl from Mercy College and dad? When I asked a few times what his tribe was he shrugged and said “A Calathumpian I guess.” It wasn’t clear. It didn’t matter.

Children and Bulleen

Mum and dad spent the first three years of their married life living with Nana in West Preston while they saved for a house. In 1955 I was born. While his friends are in the marrying season and buying property in Coburg and Pascoe Vale and Glenroy Dad buys a block of land in …. Bulleen. No made roads, no sewerage, no telephone. Orchards, paddocks, a quarry where the Yarralean estate now sits. Ever seen a horse born? I have. In the paddock two doors away. Crikey. No supermarket, just a little strip of shops with a butcher, a greengrocer and a general store. What else would you need?

On the back of the Boilermakers ticket and his experience at Chapple Bros dad had gotten a job at a company called Pict. A frozen foods processing factory. In Notting Hill. Not the quaint London suburb. Near Clayton, near Monash Uni. No freeways. Driving from Bulleen each day. He’s a fitter and turner and he’s now really on the path in something that he’s well suited to.

In 1958 along came Gary and in 1960, Janine. That was our lot, our family. We were what many Australian families then looked like. Dad was our protector and provider. Mum looked after us. On top of the day job at Pict which involved long hours I remember him wrung out and stressed a lot of the time. He was however committed to the cause. He was determined to provide for us and also to look after his mother. Despite his somewhat irreligious outlook we were to go to the local Catholic schools. They cost more than the State schools.

Despite being in the wilds of the shire of Manningham Dad and Mum were keen to maintain contact with friends and family over in the North. So was born the notion of the monthly turn whereby once a month they’d all gather on a Saturday night at one house or another for a get together. Beer, shandy’s and Cinzano and lemonade, maybe some moselle and a barbecue. Cards, board games, knitting, music, maybe some dancing and talk. Lot’s of talking. Home by 11. Thus the boys of Northcote High and the girls they’d met and married stayed united and in touch. The monthly turns stopped eventually but those friendship bonds never did.

Work

Dad’s fortunes at Pict improved. The company was the subject of mergers and takeovers and eventually it had merged with an NZ company called Watties. Dad continued up the ladder, shift work and second jobs no longer necessary and he was promoted to the role of Plant Engineer. He supervised the entire processing plant and was responsible for keeping those wheels turning. He became known for his ability to problem solve the many widgets and wodgets that a food processing factory has and was often sent to other factories in the Wattie Pict empire to fix things. I can remember him being flown in light aircraft to the factory in Millicent in SA and also in bigger planes to the plant in Glenn Innes in Queensland when things went awry there. Later in life he had an aversion to flying and I wonder if a bumpy ride one day might not have put the kibosh on future air travel.

He is remembered fondly now by those work mates of his still alive. An aspect of his time at Wattie Pict is that he was a mentor and good boss to many young people who worked there. In their number was a good friend of mine Gerry Collins, now sadly deceased himself, who worked there for a few years after spending a year mucking around with me at Swinburne. Gerry went on to establish his own successful company in due course. His wife Lisa recently reflected kindly on Dad’s mentorship of Gerry at that time.

As time went by more takeovers, more mergers and the frozen food business suffered a downturn. Finally Streets the ice cream maker had taken over the factory and in the end dad had the melancholy duty of being the one to put the chain through the gate, put the padlock on it as they ceased to manufacture in Victoria. The journey through that industry had seen him become valued and expert in a business that like many others chose to develop new methods in new places that no longer had the need for many of its workers or much of its machinery. And therefore no need for Dad. It’s 1984 and for the first time since he was 14, my dad is out of work. He’s 53. I’ve never forgotten the look on his face when he came home that day.

Children Growing and Blainair

But otherwise we’d prospered. Janine and I had finished degrees and started our working lives, Gary had just started his company called Blainair installing ducted heating and airconditioning. Like our parents we were in the marrying and partnering season and we were on the way. Dad’s hard work had laid the foundations for all of that. Job done perhaps but not quite. In 1985 Dad and Gary agree that he will join Blainair. Gary is the tradesman who can do the work but needs help with managing and running a small business. The nature of the work is in dad’s experience anyway. He understands machinery, gadgets, how things work and they set out to see how they fit into the building industry. They learn together and the business grows. They start in the house in Bulleen, Dad and Gary, mum answering the phone. They get a shop in Camberwell, then a factory in Bulleen. I remember the milestones, the sales targets achieved, units sold. They grow slowly and steadily carving out a niche in the North East – father and son. They add employees a few of whom now have 20+ years service. Nick Cook starts as an 18 YO boy and is now a partner in the business. Has his own family. My daughter Claire had one of his kids at the kinder she taught at. I like that. Pete and Dave have worked there 20+ years.

By the time dad eases out at the age of 72 in 2004 the business is on a steady footing. Gary runs the business. His son Marcus works there too and has told his dad to move over. They now employ 14 people full time and use 6 regular subbies. Dad had a great influence on that success.

Anglesea

But along the way dad and mum have had their eyes on other prizes. They love the West Coast. Had their honeymoon in Lorne. Stayed at the Cumberland Hotel. Great friends of theirs in John and Joy Puxley have a big ramshackle place on the hill behind the shops at Anglesea. We had many holidays there, a tribe of kids, several adults, the monthly turn goes coastal. Dad gets a caravan and leaves it at the Narambi Caravan Park year around. We get the coastal holidays at our own place now. In 1989 they buy a block in a quiet court and put a 10 square fibro shack on it. 4 rooms, a postage stamp on a hanky but it’s theirs.

Still Dad looks ahead. We’ve started to marry and have our own children. Cassie and I marry in 1980, later Gary and Janine also marry. Matthew arrived in 1987, followed by Marcus, Alex, Claire, Ruby and Eliza, all Dad’s cherished and much loved grandchildren. Later in the piece Gary welcomes Jed and Lilly via his new partner Jane into the family and Dad and Mum are replete. The kids all love the beach. But the shack in Brierley Court is too small. One day Dad says “Let’s get in the car, we’re going for a drive.” We arrive at 25 Second Avenue in Anglesea. On the hill overlooking Point Roadknight. It’s an auction. He puts his hand up a few times and wins the day. The place at the coast now has a bit of heft to it. A swimming pool even. He loved that pool. And a pool table. Bigger than the tricky little one at Robert Street.

In 2000 before retirement officially but when things have slowed down they move down to Anglesea to start the Final Quarter. They settle into the town and it settles into them. They make friends, new friends, not the same as old mates with shared histories and weddings and babies, but great mates nonetheless. Many in their own twilights but all of whom love the winter quiet of a small town and the things on offer in the summer. A meeting place in what’s now called Bumblebeez Café becomes the hub for the local retirees. It’s now run by Ben and Bruno. But before that its John Danielle and then Furio and Allyson. All are kind to the older couple who come in each day to meet their new friends. John Birt, Elaine and Barry Browning, Margaret and John Cummings and Bill and Marlene Hughes. Brian and Jill Emerson and their son Jamie. Brian died a few years ago and the next time Jamie saw dad he wrapped him in a bear hug and cried. And thanked him. In the street. New friends, great mates.

I’ve left a couple of stories and some important relationships and connections until last.
First the stories which I think say something about my dad.

Anecdotes

In the Order of Service (put together by Eliza, thank you) that follows you’ll see a shot that shows just how close the Coburg playing fields were to the walls of Pentridge. One day while playing Lacrosse an errant pass saw the ball sail over that wall into the prison. It’s not now. It’s then. Post war, the effects of the Great Depression keenly felt. Back then noone goes to play cricket with 15 bats in their kit. I’m looking at you Steve Smith. Noone changes racquets every set if not more often. Noone has a pair of footy boots for every day of the week. Times are tough. Even Lacrosse balls aren’t cheap. So over he goes. Over the wall. Dad. Into the prison. To fetch the ball. Gives the guards a wave. They wave back. Jumps back over, game on. I’ve grilled mum about this and she swears it happened. I believe her. Dad had a cheeky side that we all loved. In his final days Cassie whispered into his ear “It’s me Cassie, I’m here with Trevor.” He blinked in recognition and said “Well I’ll be buggered. How about that.” With a smile. And went back to sleep.

He loved to ride his bike and had a great mate in his cousin Bill Parsons. They used to ride from Brunswick to Sylvan to pick strawberries at the Parsons Family Strawberry Farm. Put that into Google Maps and see how you go. No lycra, no gears, no helmets. Modern bikes could be hoisted overhead by a toddler. Back then? No titanium in those days. Steel frames, tyres from tractors. It would have been hard work. All in a days lark for dad.

Breaking The News

I had to break the news to some old people in the last couple of weeks. It’s sad for us all but very sad for them who’ve lost touch and still remember him fondly. I rang Madge Hartwig (formerly Exelby) a twin of Jean now deceased. Madge married Rex, a tennis Hall of Famer in doubles, Davis Cup, Wimbledon the lot. A brush with fame for the family. Her uncle Les paid for dad and Madge and Jean’s tennis lessons. The village again. She said, sadly, “He was my favorite cousin.” There’s been a lot of that.

Close Friends and the Bombers

I have to mention one of mum and dad’s Anglesea friends in John Birt. Partly because it allows me to talk about the Essendon footy club and dad’s odd relationship with it. John played for Essendon in the sixties and would have played in the premierships in 1962 and 1965. He later went over to the Dark Side and played for Collingwood. He’s otherwise a good fella. He’s been a very good friend to mum and dad in their Anglesea phase and particularly helpful and kind recently. Kept in touch with me and mum, ran errands for them, took the bins in at the house and so on. Knows clearly what being a mate is. Thanks to you John.
But back to the Bombers. You wouldn’t call Dad an Essendon supporter. He was really an Essendon critic. He reminded me of Waldorf and Statler from the Muppets. You’ll have to ask Mrs Google that too if you don’t know what I mean. The last time he took me to the footy was the Preliminary final in 1966. We got flogged in the wet by the Saints and mainly by Darrel Baldock. I don’t think he ever recovered. And this despite the fact that his Uncles Murray Exelby and Stan Wilson both played over 100 games for the Dons, took him to the footy VFL, VFA and the metropolitan clubs they later played and coached for. After I left home he’d ring me after every game. “Didja go?” “Yeah dad, they were pretty good to day.” He had an answer. “They can’t kick” or “they’re too slow” or “why do they handball all the time? And backwards.” It was a conversation I could never make headway in. A few years ago we’d added Adam Saad and Connor McKenna. The call came after a game we’d won and they’d been good in. “Did you see Saady and Connor dad? Jet propelled they were. I think we’ve fixed the speed problem.” He paused. “What’s the good of running like buggery down the ground if you don’t know what to do when you get there?” Checkmate.
He had a particular regard (or lack of it) for certain players. Had them in the gun. Most recently it was Joe Daniher. “He can’t kick straight. What are they paying him all that money for if he can’t kick straight?” Per custom I defended Joey. “He’s got OP Dad. A lot of the big fellas get it. Buddy has got it.” Pause. “He can’t kick …”. Ever hopeful late last year at the end of the trade period I spoke to Dad. “We’ve stuck to our guns Dad. We’ve hung onto Joey. He’ll play for us next year.” Pause. A long pause. “Oh. Shit.” He then went quiet.

Ron Blainey, with sons Gary and Trevor

Family

OK so it’s time on in the last quarter. Nearly there. Family. I’d be remiss not to mention the Wilson family again. Stan and Grace and their children Russell, Lance, Dianne and my great mate Glenda. Parents, brothers and sisters to my dad always. A great support to my Nana and for my dad. They moved into our street in Bulleen when we were in our teens. Dad and Stan and Russell and Lance raced greyhounds with a lot of success. Poor man’s racing but fun all the same. Stan and dad walked them. Stan, about whom I could speak forever (don’t worry I wont) was quite a fella. Backman’s knuckles, teetotaller, kind and gentle he called in every night about tea time. We looked forward to it. I know dad did. Uncle Stan was making sure we were OK. The village. Family. Bless ‘em all.

Not a footnote so much as a late note. My sister in law Jan, her husband Tim and their children Rick, Serena and Jamie are our family down the coast, the Torquay connection. Jan and Tim have been great recently with Jan in particular visiting mum and dad many times. Not to labour the point but it is the point. Dad’s point. Family. Thanks Jannie. We had a great Christmas at the Kaisers in Dad’s last proper outing. In the video presentation coming up (thanks to Ruby who prepared it with the help of Eliza, Claire and Alex) you’ll see him sitting there at the end smiling, happy as. Guarding his presents and his chocolates I should say. A really good day.

Dad didn’t like crowds. I think that’s why he gave the footy a wide berth. Never went to the cinema, the theatre, no galleries except little country ones, I doubt that he ever set foot in Fed Square. Or the city in the last half century for that matter. However I really mean he didn’t like big crowds. But there was a type of crowd he loved. The gatherings of family and friends at his home whether it was in the Bulleen house or the one at Anglesea. Usually on the feast days, Christmas, birthdays. He loved those occasions. Loved having all those familiar and loved nearby. That extended to my friends and I assume Gary’s and Janine’s. The house in Bulleen became a hub for our mates. Beer in the fridge, the pool table ready to use. A mate from school Des Maloney and his brother Bernie used to go to the bike races at Bathurst every year. Year after year they’d drop into Robert Street at sparrows fart on the day they left for cackleberries and toast and a cuppa and then get on their way. I don’t think Bulleen is on the way to Bathurst from their home in Burwood but there it is. It was that kind of place.

We had a lot of family days at Anglesea. He loved his grandkids. Made sure everything was ready for when they came. Cleaned the pool to laboratory cleanliness in the days leading up to a family do. Rang me and told me he was doing it. Not the most exciting of topics but it seemed important that I know. “what’ll we need? Two chops and a sausage each enough for everybody? Chicken kebabs? I’ve got a slab of heavy and a slab of light. Enough? Are you bringing the red? I’ve got one that one of the suppliers gave me last Christmas. Looks alright.” Just checking. Making sure. Providing. Family paramount. And he’d ring back two days later and run through the list again.

Legacy

When someone who has reached a good age passes away there is inevitably a reflection on their legacy. As I’ve said often throughout Dad loved family and was keen for all to prosper. Often asked how each was going, what they were up to. Just checking. He would be well pleased with what he left behind. Amongst his grandchildren there is a nurse working in aged care, a kinder teacher, a graphic design student, a filmmaker and radio presenter, a young manager in retail, the heir to the family business (look out Gaz) and a lawyer. Still others working in marketing and the building trade. All doing stuff. Interested in sports, fashion, the arts, the environment. Some interested in politics, some not. Good types all of them. Look you in the eye, shake your hand, smile a lot. You did well dad.

So I speak today on behalf of my brother, sister, their children and mine, Ian and Jane and my wife Cassie and of course my mum. We’ve all worked hard in recent times to shepherd my parents through this stage of their lives. Our hope is that we’ve made good on dad’s resolve all those years ago. That was always the aim.

Our dad, our grandpa and a much loved husband and friend to many has passed on. I have wondered where to if anywhere. I’d like to think he’s gone where the Calathumpians go. And that wherever that is they’re young again. Those Calathumpians. Fit and agile. Playing Lacrosse probably. Dad’s got Reg and Don and Wes playing with him. And Nobby O’Brien. Did I mention him? He also passed away this week. RIP Nobby. They’re being cheered on by Bev and Don’s beautiful Betty and Graeme’s lovely Gwen. Pucko might be there and Jack. And over the cheering can be heard the voice of Jacko’s mum, Coburg’s Number 1 supporter. “Give the ball to Ronnie. They can’t catch him. He’s too fast. Go Ronnie go.” And go he does. At a clip charging towards the net. Look out. And if the ball goes over the wall we know who’ll fetch it.

Job’s done dad.
The Pools clean, the water sparkling in the sun.
The dogs have been walked, the bins are out and there are plenty of soft drinks in the fridge in case the grandkids come over. And you’ve got an endless supply of chocolate ginger and licorice to enjoy.

Rest easy, old man. You’ve earnt it.

26 October 1931 – 20 January 2020

For Yossl Baker: 'He lit up a room with his entire personality', by Mark Baker - 2020

26 February 2020, Melbourne Chevra Kadisha, St Kilda, Melbourne, Australia

Death is no stranger to my family; this is the third time in four years I’ve sat on that dreaded bench but today I’m alone with my mother and an empty space beside us. Back when the family plots were vacant, Johnny and I used to joke about who would be buried next to which parent. Which of us would get to listen to an eternal recitation of my mother’s poetic speeches about how being underground was not unlike her hiding spot in a black hole during the Holocaust, or who would be in direct earshot of my father’s jokes, his business commentary, and the TV tuned on full blast between ‘ or ‘Who Vonts to be a Millionaire?’ That was meant to be a long way off in the future. Today has put that discussion to rest; fate has determined it for us, with a twist no one could ever have predicted about the tragic order of things. Johnny and I also used to joke that we have great genes. Only last week one of my orphaned friends commented how unusual it is for our generation to have not one, but two living survivor parents. There’s also an irony in that, a painful one that has highlighted for our family the cruel randomness of life. Until Kerryn and then Johnny joined the inhabitants of this ghostly shtetl, my Dad came almost every Sunday for a consecration, before moving on to Chadstone to measure the condition of retail. While here, he would walk around the rows and aisles and point out the familiar graves, and with his Talmudic memory that could put a pin through the page of the life of any person, recite with precision an obscure or a hilarious story about Shloimeleh, or Moishe, or Meyer, or Freda, and the growing number of friends that were moving here until there was no one left back home to fill the four sides of a card table.

His memory and ability to connect the dots was one of his most remarkable features, and he carried it until his last day. You all know that look: his mind whirring like a poker machine until ding, he hits the jackpot and the details of your relatives pour out. ‘Ah. I knew your Zaida when he was a tailor in Flinders Street. I bought yarn off him for 2 pounds a yard in 1961.’ Or, ‘Ah, I remember your Buba danced with Chaim in Maison de Luxe on a Wednesday but he vos little and when his head bumped her tsiskes his vig fell off.’ And then his body would convulse with laughter until tears streamed out of his eyes, because he could actually see the scene unfolding before him in technicolour, every frame of it, going all the way back to Poland. No one has ever bumped into Yossl on the street without learning something they didn’t know about their ancestors. ‘Khai you,’ he would greet them, ‘Khu you,’ and then he’d tell you exactly Khu you were, rattling off stories like a Catskill comedian, a touch of the gossipy Yente in him, but never never was there a hint of malice and always always it was with loving humour. His humour. It was inbuilt in him and rippled through his whole body, his gesticulations, his passion, the way he lit up a room with his entire personality, and most of all with his eyes – sparkling, twinkling, blinking rapidly from over-excitement.

There’s the famous story from the Talmud of the House of Hillel and Shammai arguing through the night about whether God should create Adam and Eve. This argument was the one occasion the rival schools came to a unanimous agreement. No, they said, adding that now that the deed is done let’s deal with the consequences. In one sense they were right – my parents’ torments and suffering are testament to that, but on the other, if they could have gazed into the future and met my Dad, they would have reached a unanimous view the other way. Yossl wasn’t just larger than life; he created a parallel world of human possibility, of kindness, unconditional love, almost perfection. And like any world, his had its own language. Yosslisms, we called them. I’m sure you won’t hear a talk in the coming days that doesn’t refer to his unique vocabulary. The words weren’t random, they made grammatical sense. On their honeymoon when my mum was 19, they went to Sydney and she got appendicitis. Such a hard word for a migrant but he stripped away the medical pretensions and reduced it to its original source. A pain in the sitis. In his world, not everyone was Jewish, but as the title of the Yiddish album from the 1960s went, ‘When You’re in Love the Whole World Is Jewish’. ‘Is he or she Jewish?’ was always his first question, asked at the top of his voice, and it almost always pleased him to learn they were, except he feared, as he told me last week, an outbreak of antisemitism if either Sanders or Bloomingberg were elected. Otherwise, he would turn gentiles into Jews, such as Erin Brokovich, who he called Aron Berkovic, or the famous actor Maximilian Schell who somehow became his old friend, Muscatel.

And then there was his most famous line. ‘Genia’s in Surfers and I’m in Paradise.’ This week that joke was tragically fulfilled, but until then, it was nothing more than a gag. For the truth is that my father never left my mother’s side for a second, he was her protector, redeemer and carer from the day he courted her as a new immigrant to Australia. ‘He spoiled me rotten,’ Mum will say, though she rightly takes credit that she tamed and anchored this handsome muscly man whose postwar image is captured in a series of photos of him on a motorbike, or sitting on the bonnet of his Humber Hawk, a cigarette dangling from his mouth.

And so it seems fitting, hard as it was for us, that his sudden and unexpected death took place in Surfers Paradise, because our times there carry so many threads from his life, and also of his death. I think of the holidays Johnny and I had as children at the Chevron with so many family friends, all of them survivors who never spoke of their past, but laughed around the pool or baked on the beach shmeared with baby oil with silver foil fans to attract extra sun, how they played red aces, and the times during my strict kosher days that my Mum furtively cooked kosher schnitzel for me in a bathroom from the patelnia (pan), while my father fanned the smoke away; until the high-rise apartments shadowed the beachfront and they made their home away from home in Allungah at Paradise Centre.

How did they do it, these survivors? Did they cast their trauma behind them on their boat to Australia, deliberately choosing life over death, or more likely, did they bottle it up inside them, the past and present entangled, shaping their personalities. Like the time when I sat with my Dad in their apartment in Surfers and I asked him to tell me his story, the only family tree he never wanted to explore, and I asked him how far the train was from the gas chambers when he arrived at Birkenau, and he casually pointed through the windows and said, ‘Oh, about from here to Cavill Avenue.’ Still, Surfers, it seemed, was a sanctuary they could escape to, but in more recent years, it was a different experience they were trying to escape, but could never shake off; the loss of Kerryn and then my brother and their son Johnny. At home, they were in deep grief within the four walls of their apartment which they would never leave. After a three year break, we were relieved that they agreed to resume their visits to Surfers. While it was easier to keep a vigilant eye on them in Melbourne, they were more independent, an elevator ride from the arcade and the restaurants and the Pokies. I won’t say they were happy, that would be expecting too much, but the pain was more bearable away from Melbourne where they felt caged in a prison of memories, eased through the daily phone calls from me and Anita which always began with a kvetch from my Dad about how hard life is because their grief always pursued them, even with the background tv sound of a tennis game and the roar of the expansive ocean.

My mum said we’ve been coming to Surfers for 62 years but nothing’s the same. The times when they knew everyone in every apartment of Paradise Centre, a community of Holocaust survivors, are gone. The people around them are unfamiliar, yet everywhere they go, they are celebrities. When Michelle and I were there last month, followed by visits from some grandchildren and other relatives, we were stunned. At Charlies, home to the famous scene when Dad asked for a breakfast of ‘risin toast’, and was served a bowl of ‘rice and toast’, the waiters loved them, learned his language and so understood that when Dad asked for Brigetta, he meant a bruschetta, or that rumash meant mushroom. In the newsagent where he ordered his weekly ‘Jewish News’ and pile of magazines for Mum which I took to the hospital, the woman knew him so well, and when the kids went to tell her yesterday what had happened, she rubbed her arms with goosebumps and eyes watering with tears. At the Italian restaurant on Orchard Avenue, the young owners embraced them both, and my Dad reminisced about how they played tennis together on the Ballah court 40 years ago, the court I stared at yesterday from the balcony where my mother was smoking her umpteenth cigarette, the court empty but imagining him with his distinct serve. In the Chinese restaurant on the Highway the owner almost fed his favourite customer with a spoon, and when we went to the casino, a French croupier who hadn’t seen my parents for ages greeted them excitedly, especially my Mum, with a cry of Georgina. We saw it at Hurricanes, overflowing with summer diners. ‘I’m sorry,’ I was told, ‘there’s a 90 minute wait.’ I despaired and we left but my Dad had hobbled off with his stick and within 30 seconds a young manager chased me and said, ‘we have a table for you.’

How did you do it Dad, this magic with people?

But what my parents missed more than anything during their times in Surfers, was their eight grandchildren - Timnah, Nadav, Mayan, Gilad, Karni, Gabe, Sarah, and Rachel and their partners and especially their great-grandchildren. They were their lifeline, every single one of them, who my father adored unconditionally and they in turn worshipped him. The day Gil and Shani brought the twins, Ziggy and Aya from Byron to visit them in Surfers, they were exploding with excitement and joy. Who knew that these two broken grief-stricken people could find the space to be so inflated with boundless love and life. And so it came as no surprise that the trigger for their planned return came this week after a 3 month stay. ‘Book us a flight for Friday,’ my Dad said. ‘Mummy’s ready. We want to be back for our Rudilu’s birthday on Sunday and his little sister Addy.’ That booking was never made. On Friday morning I got a call that my Dad had fallen. Everything that happened from this point personifies him. They were on Cavill Avenue and an ambulance was called. My Mum went up to the apartment to get his tablets and pack some things for him. He was in the ambulance when she returned, and the drivers said she has to leave. ‘No,’ she said, climbing in. ‘He would never leave me. Never.’ ‘I’m sorry, they said, you can’t come into the ambulance.’ ‘No,’ she repeated, ‘and if you want me to leave you will have to carry me out.’ They let her stay, of course.

I got a call from the hospital at 8 the following morning, 7 Surfers time. Twenty minutes later I was on my way to the airport, and when I arrived at the hospital, there was a bed made up for my mother who had slept by his side in his room. She explained they’d been in the emergency department till 4 in the morning. ‘How did they get my number at the hospital?’ I asked. ‘Dad remembered,’ she said, though he was delirious from a cocktail of drugs and from the pain in his fractured hip. ‘And why didn’t you ring me when it happened in the middle of the night?’ I asked, having only spoken to him about two hours before the fall. ‘Because Dad didn’t want to wake you and he told the hospital not to ring before 7 in the morning.’

From then on it was a barrage of meetings with doctors and filling out forms. Every encounter exposed a different angle of his life but nowhere did the truth come out more than when a nurse told me that he’d said when he arrived that he had come to Surfers for the funeral of his son. How true and revealing. As hard as they might try to compartmentalise their lives, the grief bleeds through the cracks, and expresses itself openly when the unconscious is given permission to speak.

From that moment, I became the mediator, stunned nonetheless that the two of them alone had got to this point with my Mum hard of hearing. ‘How old was he?’ they asked, handing me a form. I looked at the document and saw before me all the other documents I had uncovered from his youth. His birth certificate, his school records, his Auschwitz and Buchenwald registration, and immigration papers to Australia. Each one of them showed a different birthdate. In that second when the nurse waited for my answer, I thought of the schoolboy born in Wierzbnik-Starachowice in Poland, who jumped through the windows of Cheder to escape his teacher, and surpassed the naughtiest schoolboy act I’ve ever heard of by pissing in the pocket of the melamed’s coat; I thought of the boy being marched up a hill before he was barmitzvah with his brother Boruch from where he spent the next five years in a series of slave labour camps, before being sent to Auschwitz and then Buchenwald, where his father Leib had been killed in 1940, severed from his mother Hinde and sisters Marta and Yente who met their murderous fate in Treblinka. I thought of all the times someone whispered to him, tell them you’re older so that they sent you to a better section of the camp, or tell them you’re younger so you’re spared a certain death, or so you’re eligible for a visa to Australia. Time for my Dad didn’t move chronologically but was measured by a split-second decision that granted the possibility of extending his life.

So what do I tell the nurse and write in the form? His official date that he has lived by in Australia, 1 June 1929. Or is it more important for the doctors to know that he was born two years earlier, making him 92? Perhaps I should trick them and say what he believed, that he was born on April 11 1945, the day of his liberation, an age that matched his boyish personality. Or show them the photograph of him as an older man, pointing at the teenager in that iconic photograph of him a month after his liberation in Buchenwald. The message. Give him another chance to live.

His name. What do I write? Josek? Joe, as he was known in business? Or Yossl. Perhaps I should sing the Connie Francis song to him, as it was sung to him on his sixtieth birthday in our house at Aroona Rd, and as Rachel played it through her phone in his dying moments. One of his theme songs. ‘Ay yay yay Yossl, Yossl, Yossl, Yossl.’ It’s so sad, the kids said when they listened to it. I never thought of it as sad, until then.

And what of his surname. Baker. Born Bekiermaszyn. I’ve learned to spell it with its crashing Polish consonants. BEKIERMASZYN. One thing, the Nazis didn’t know how to spell it. Nor did the Jewish Agency, who listed him as a survivor on their registry in 1946, along with his brother Boruch. Together they went to Geneva with that name and spent the next three years being rehabilitated. I caught a glimpse of that transitional time once on a family holiday to St Moritz, when my Dad put on a pair of ice-skates, and whizzed around the rink. Who would have thought that I’d find myself living in that same place for four months last year with Michelle. I went in search of some of the gaps from his past, as though I could rewrite a section of The Fiftieth Gate. I found his name in the Swiss archives, and the location of the ORT Jewish training centre where he was sent after recuperating in a hospice from TB. ‘Do you remember where you lived?’ I asked him. ‘Oh, it was an orphanage,’ and he mumbled a name that no one in the Jewish community there recognised. ‘Could you see the fountain from where you lived?’ ‘Yes, I remember the shpritz,’ and eventually I found the approximate location of the Jewish welfare home in Switzerland. But what surprised me more than anything was that he asked the officials if he could use his stipend to live in a private home because – get ready for this – it was too noisy for him. My father, who had spent the previous five years in a string of death camps, summoned at dawn to the Appelplatz where he shouted out his number, had finally found sanctuary but thought it was too noisy. Perhaps, this was the beginning of his transition from the adolescent who endured filth and bedbugs, torture actually, deciding that he had expended all his energy on surviving and would later run at the sight of a moth, or a Mouse as he cried, leaving my Mum to do the swatting.

The documents in Australia show confusion about his name. Johnny’s birth certificate shows Bekiermaszyn, and it was soon after that he officially changed the family name to Baker, but upon receiving it, still signed it Bekiermaszyn. The name even carries on to my birth, back and forth. Perhaps he didn’t want to let go of the machine, because machines became his work life, starting with a single sewing-machine from which he built a business that exists to this day with his late and beloved brother Boruch and now the next generation on both sides led by Yechiel, Johnny’s place represented by Nadav, called Swiss Models appropriately after their time in Switzerland, though not really appropriately because it sounds like an escort agency.

And then there is his number. Instinctively, it was the one part of his body, punctured in hospital with a mess of needles, beeping machines and tubes, that we allowed ourselves to photograph. The nurses all noticed it and asked. I couldn’t resist telling them his story because perhaps, I hoped that the number would save him from death, as it did by sparing him from the gas chambers to the munition factories of the satellite camp, Buna Monowitz.

Before going in for hip surgery, I was told about the risks and had to sign forms. He emerged from surgery with a positive tone from the doctor. Soon after, things began to go wrong. His blood levels were dropping and eventually the doctors discovered internal bleeding. He would need another anaesthetic that same day to allow for a gastroscopy to locate and stop the bleeding. He was still delirious when I went in with my mother from the previous operation, but he still managed to get a few words out. His last words to us: Genia, hot gegessen? Have you eaten yet? he asked, looking at me and Mum. That was him, again, always thinking about others.

His situation improved and then we were told that he was critical and would die by the following day. As we sat by his bedside and watched the numbers on the monitors dive, the kids played music in his ear from their phone. ‘Zaida,’they said. ‘Listen.’ The first song was – what else? – ‘Rock Around the Clock’. That song is a beat that runs through his life, first danced alone when he came to Australia, about which he cheekily said that he went dancing 8 times a week, ‘tvice on Sunday’. Soon after my mother arrived, she caught his eye, and from that moment, they have rocked around the clock together, stepping in perfect harmony, and knowing each other’s movements like the inner mechanics of a Swiss watch. They danced it at Station Pier where their ship had docked in Australia for the launch of my book about them 25 years ago; they’ve danced it at every simcha, and at every Buchenwald Ball. And then, when tragedy began to strike our family, they led the dance at Gabe and Gabi’s engagement and wedding after Kerryn died. When Johnny was dying, I thought they would never be able to stand on their feet again, but when Gil and Shani got married soon after his death, they somehow rose from the grave they longed to share with him, and lifted all of our spirits, and especially Anita’s, by dancing. That’s it, I thought, the last dance. But their clock miraculously wound up again when Michelle and I married, and they mounted the stage by leading our family in their rapturous dance.

I still wanted more; we all did, even though my Dad was now using a stick to walk, and my Mum’s feet hurt. But the hands of the clock were ticking as the numbers on the ICU monitors plummeted. It’s been too many times that I’ve had to watch my mother say her goodbyes to the people she loved. My Dad found it harder to confront the deaths in our family, and would stand by the doorway, quivering and weeping. But my Mum, who has always been traumatised by the death of her mother at the end of the war, insisted on facing the inevitable. On Kerryn’s last day, she held her and shouted what would become the refrain of these past years, ‘Take me, If there’s a God in heaven then take me.’ And none of us will forget how she held Johnny’s hand, stroked his piano fingers as she called them, and pleaded to exchange places. ‘Why,’ she still beats her chest, ‘didn’t they take me instead of Johnny?’

And so on Sunday, she had to do it again, this time with her partner, lover, and carer of 67 years. She brushed his hair, and then made poetry out of every part of his body that she caressed. ‘These hands,’ she said, holding them, ‘worked so hard for our family.’ And then touching his chest, she said, ‘this heart, had only love for us.’ And then she turned to the nurses and begged them to hook her to the machines and take her with him. ‘How can I live without my Yossl, I don’t want to live, how can I?’ When one of us tried to console her by saying that she would be reunited with Johnny, she said, ‘What do you think I am? Stupid?’ We had to drag her out and I sat with my father and watched as his rate suddenly flattened to zero.

We played the songs to him, as I’ve said, but now without our Yossl, the song we will have to play is the one also sung by Connie Francis. It’s her other song, ‘My Yiddishe Mameh’ - my Mum who has literally walked in fier and vasser, crossed fire and water, for her children, Johnny and me. And in the day after while we waited in Surfers for my Dad to be taken home to Melbourne, my Mum, who has been begging for the heavens to open for her, showed strength. Between her cries of agony, she also chatted to us. She is blessed with gorgeous grandchildren who love her as they loved their Zaida, with great-grandchildren who no matter what make her smile, with a sister Sylvia who saw Yossl as a father and her kids Gid and Shelly, and she has always been blessed with daughters-in-law who have cared for her, Anita who has suffered so much and has loved and supported my parents since Johnny’s schooldays, Kerryn who was like a daughter to her after her own parents died, and Michelle who yesterday my mother asked to share with me. She made her instructions very clear about what she wants. I never would have imagined it but my Mum is now the head, the matriarch of the family. I feel so relieved to know that she still has a reserve of strength, though I know she will be more broken than ever.
There has always been a song my father would sing first for his two sons, then for each of his grandchildren, and now for his great-grandchildren. Life has a strange way of bringing beginnings and ends together. It’s now for us to sing it to him, our baby, our redeemer, our hero.

Shlof shoyn mir my, Yosseleh, mayn sheynshik
Di eygelekh, di shvartsinke, makh tsu,
A yingele vos hot shoyn ale tseyndelekh (!)
Muz nokh di Tate zingen, Ay Li Lu.
Lu Lu.

For Kobe Bryant: 'Kobe, you’re heaven’s MVP', by Shaquille O'Neal - 2020

24 February 2020, Staples Center, Los Angeles, USA

Speaking to a group of people about Kobe Bryant- (silence).

…Forever. (Silence). Capri, and a loving son and brother. Kobe was a loyal friend and a true Renaissance man. As many of you know, Kobe and I had a very complex relationship throughout the years. But not unlike another leadership duo, John Lennon and Paul McCartney, whose creative rivalry led to some of the greatest music of all time. Kobe and I pushed one another to play some of the greatest basketball of all time and I am proud that no other team has accomplished what the three-peat Lakers have done since the Shaq and the Kobe Lakers did it.

And yeah, sometimes like immature kids we argued, we fought, we bantered or insulted each other with offhand remarks, our feuds. But make no mistake, even when folks thought we were on bad terms, when the cameras were turned off he and I would throw a wink at each other and say, “Let’s go whoop some ass.” He never took it seriously. In truth, Kobe and I always maintained a deep respect and a love for one another.

The day Kobe gained my respect was the guys were complaining. Said, “Shaq, Kobe’s not passing the ball.” I said, “I’ll talk to him.” I said, “Kobe, there’s no I in team.” And Kobe said, “I know, but there’s a ‘M-E’ in that motherfucker.” So I went back and told Rick and Big Shababasaid, “Just get the rebound, he’s not passing.”

Mamba, you were taken away from us way too soon. Your next chapter of life was just beginning. But now it’s time for us to continue your legacy. You said yourself that everything negative, pressure, challenges is all the opportunity for me to rise. So we now take that sage advice and now rise from anguish and begin with the healing. Just know that we’ve got your back, little brother. I’ll look after things down here. I’ll be sure to teach Natalia, Bianka, and baby Capri all your moves, and I promise I will not teach them my free throw techniques.

But for now, I take comfort in the fact as we speak, Kobe and Gigi are holding hands, walking to the nearest basketball court. Kobe will show her some new Mamba moves today and Gigi soon masters them. Kobe, you’re heaven’s MVP. I love you my man. Until we meet again. Rest in peace, brother.

Crowd:
Kobe! Kobe! Kobe!

For Kobe Bryant: 'In the game of life, Kobe left nothing in the tank', by Michael Jordan - 2020

24 February 2020, Staples Center, Los Angeles, USA

I would say, “Good morning,” but it’s afternoon. I’m grateful to Vanessa and the Bryant family for the opportunity to speak today. I’m grateful to be here to honor Gigi and celebrate the gift that Kobe gave us all. What he accomplished as a basketball player, as a businessman and a storyteller and as a father.

In the game of basketball, in life as a parent, Kobe left nothing in the tank. He left it all on the floor. Maybe it surprised people that Kobe and I were very close friends, but we were very close friends. Kobe was my dear friend. He was like a little brother.

Everyone always wanted to talk about the comparisons between he and I. I just wanted to talk about Kobe. All of us have brothers, sisters, little brothers, little sisters who, for whatever reason, always tend to get in your stuff. Your closet, your shoes, everything. It was a nuisance, if I can say that word. But that nuisance turned into love over a period of time just because the admiration that they had for you as big brothers or big sisters.

The questions, their wanting to know every little detail about life that they were about to embark on. He used to call me, text me 11:30, 2:30, 3:00 in the morning talking about post up moves, footwork, and sometimes the triangle. At first, it was an aggravation but then it turned into a certain passion.

This kid had passion like you would never know. It’s amazing thing about passion. If you love something, if you have a strong passion for something, you would go to the extreme to try to understand or try to get it. Either ice cream, Cokes, hamburgers, whatever you have a love for. If you have to walk, you would go get it. If you have to beg someone, you would go get it. What Kobe Bryant was to me was the inspiration that someone truly cared about the way either I played the game or the way that he wanted to play the game. He wanted to be the best basketball player that he could be.

And as I got to know him, I wanted to be the best big brother that I could be. To do that, you have to put up with the aggravation, the late night calls or the dumb questions. I took great pride as I got to know Kobe Bryant that he was just trying to be a better person, a better basketball player. We talked about business, we talked about family, we talked about everything. And he was just trying to be a better person.

Now he’s got me, I’ll have to look at another crying meme for the next… I told my wife I wasn’t going to do this because I didn’t want to see that for the next three or four years. That is what Kobe Bryant does to me. I’m pretty sure Vanessa and his friends all can say the same thing. He knows how to get to you in a way that affects you personally. Even if he’s being a pain in the ass, you always had a sense of love for him and the way that he can bring out the best in you. And he did that for me.

I remember maybe a couple of months ago, he sends me a text and he’s saying, “I’m trying to teach my daughter some moves and I don’t know what I was thinking or what I was working on. But what were you thinking about as you were growing up trying to work on your moves?” I said, “What age?” He says, “12.” I said, “12, I was trying to play baseball.” He sends me a text back saying, “Laughing my ass off.” And this was at 2:00 in the morning.

But the thing about him was we could talk about anything that related to basketball, but we can talk about anything that related to life. And we, as we grew up in life, rarely have friends that we can have conversations like that. Well, it’s even rarer when you can grow up against adversaries and have conversations like that.

I went and saw Phil Jackson in 1999 or maybe 2000, I don’t know. When Phil was here in LA and I walk in and Kobe’s sitting there. And I’m in a suit, the first thing Kobe said, “Did you bring your shoes?” No, I wasn’t thinking about playing. But his attitude to compete and play against someone he felt like he could enhance and improve his game with. Jimmy, that’s what I loved about the kid. Absolutely loved about the kid.

No matter where he saw me, it was a challenge and I admired him because his passion, you rarely see someone who’s looking and trying to improve each and every day. And not just in sports, but as a parent, as a husband, I am inspired by what he’s done and what he shared with Vanessa and what he’s shared with his kids.

I have a daughter who is 30, I just became a grandparent and I have two twins. I have twins at six. I can’t wait to get home to become a girl dad and to hug them and to see the love and the smiles that they bring to us as parents. He taught me that just by looking at this tonight, looking at how he responded and reacted with the people that he actually loved. These are the things that we will continue to learn from Kobe Bryant.

To Vanessa, Natalia, Bianka, Capri, my wife and I will keep you close in our hearts and our prayers. We will always be here for you, always. I also want to offer our condolences and support to all the families affected by this enormous tragedy.

Kobe gave every last ounce of himself to whatever he was doing after basketball, he showed a creative side to himself that I didn’t think any of us knew he had. In retirement, he seemed so happy. He found new passions and he continued to give back as a coach in his community.

More importantly, he was an amazing dad, amazing husband who dedicated himself to his family and who loved his daughters with all his heart. Kobe never left anything on the court and I think that’s what he would want for us to do.

No one knows how much time we have. That’s why we must live in the moment. We must enjoy the moment. We must reach and see and spend as much time as we can with our families and friends and the people that we absolutely love. To live in the moment means to enjoy each and every one that we come in contact with.

When Kobe Bryant died, a piece of me died. And as I look in this arena and across the globe, a piece of you died, or else you wouldn’t be here. Those are the memories that we have to live with and we learn from. I promise you, from this day forward, I will live with the memories of knowing [inaudible 02:15:01] little brother that I tried to help in every way I could. Please rest in peace, little brother.

For Betty Curthbert: 'Today, we honour you with the same depth of emotion as we have loved you', by Alan Jones - 2017

21 August 2017, Sydney Cricket Ground, Sydney, Australia

There is a crushing reminder of our own mortality in being here today to honour and remember the unyieldingly great Betty Cuthbert, AM.MBE.

Four Olympic gold medals, one Commonwealth Games gold medal, two silver medals, 16 world records. The 1964 Helms World Trophy for Outstanding Athlete of the Year in all amateur sports in Australia. And it’s entirely appropriate that this formal and official farewell, sponsored by the State Government of New South Wales, should be taking place in this sporting theatre, which Betty adorned and indeed astonished in equal measure. It was here that in preparation for the Cardiff Empire Games in 1958 and the Rome Olympics in 1960, as the Games were being held in the Northern Hemisphere, out of season for Australian athletes, that winter competition was arranged to bring them to their peak. Races were put on here at the Sydney Cricket Ground at half time during a rugby league game. And it was in July 1978, as Betty was suffering significantly, but not publicly, from multiple sclerosis, that the government of New South Wales invited Betty Cuthbert to become the first woman member of the Sydney Cricket Ground Trust. Of course, in the years since that appointment, as Betty herself acknowledged, her road became often rocky and steep.

She once talked about the pitfalls, the craters and the hurdles.

But along the way, she found many revival points. She once said, just like the marathon runners who grab a drink to keep their energy from being depleted, the nourishment that she found always lay in the knowledge that she gained along the way which she was able to use at later points in her life. The cups holding that nourishment were many things –the support of caring people, the comfort of animals and the natural world, the inspiration of others running their own gruelling races and what she described as the love of a heavenly father. I suppose it is only in recent times that the wider public’s attention has been drawn to the fact that Betty is a twin, born 20 minutes before Marie arrived on the scene.20 April,1938.She was one and a half pounds smaller than Marie, describing herself as a skinny little thing with long arms and legs. The nurse who looked after the births of the two girls nicknamed Betty, ‘The Spider’. Of the third and fourth children in the Cuthbert family –John was four years older and Jean was six years older. Betty always saw herself simply as an ordinary girl from the suburbs, originally of Merrylands, rising to do extraordinary things.

Nothing ostentatious or pretentious about Betty. When she was young, Dad worked nearby in a factory and at home grew and sold cut flowers and a few vegetables to help with the income. They were hard times, ahead of the war, and every penny counted. But when Betty was five, the family shifted to Ermington and Betty’s father expanded his little nursery and finally left the factory and became a full time nurseryman. Betty was a gangling five year old and started at the Ermington Primary School with Marie. She always called Marie, ‘Midge’. The only running Betty had ever done was at picnic carnivals. It wasn’t until she was eight that she had her first proper race. It was at the school’s sports carnival. She wore an old-fashioned long tunic and ran in bare feet, like all the other girls, and she won the 50 and 75 yards races. She had a try at the high jump and she won that as well

Like all kids then, and even today, that resulted in her going to the district primary schools’ athletic meeting and she won the two sprint events and the high jump. She then went to the New South Wales Combined Primary School Championships and, as she said, in the high jump she was the first one eliminated. So she took the hint. But she made up for it later in the afternoon by winning the 50 and 75 yards finals and they were her first two State titles. She just loved running. She’d run to school in the morning. Tear around the playground during the morning and lunch breaks. Run home after school. And then run around the neighbourhood until tea. She played just about every sport there was at school –athletics, vigoro, basketball –but she liked running best of all. As she once said to me, Mum and Dad had never been good at sport, but John and Jean were school champions but never took any interest in it once they left school.

As she said ruefully, ‘Midge’ was good too, but always had to put up with me coming first. When Betty won her first trophy for being the champion girl athlete at the school, one of the neighbours said “That’s only the start of the collection. ”But never in Betty’s wildest dreams did she think she’d have the collection of trophies she eventually accumulated. Her father’s property covered four acres, including the house, and in those early days all the land around Ermington was open paddocks. Betty loved to get out there and run through the long grass. She felt as free as a bird. She hated being indoors. She was happy when she could fiddle in the garden. Her father gave her a few shillings a week for doing jobs like weeding and sweeping up. She would always say that while ‘Midge’, Marie, the twin, finished second to Betty most times in the races, it was ‘Midge’ who was boss. And ‘Midge’ looked after Betty.

Because then, and even through most of her life, Betty was quiet and often withdrawn. In those early years, she would close up like a clam whenever anybody spoke to her. She let ‘Midge’ do the talking. And Marie fought all her battles. When Betty left Ermington Primary School, just before she turned 13, she went with her twin, ‘Midge’, to Parramatta Home Science School. It was there that her life changed. She first met June Ferguson, the school’s physical education teacher and a former Olympian. June had competed in the relay and the long jump at the 1948 London Olympics and she was also the women’s coach of the Western Suburbs Athletics Club. Indeed, it was at her first athletics carnival at the Parramatta Home Science School that Betty won the 75 yards and 100 yards for 13 year olds that June Ferguson noticed her and asked Betty if she would like to join Wests, where June could coach her. Betty started straight away. It was only a short time after her joining Wests that that the Combined Home Science Schools Championships were held here at the Sydney Cricket Ground. And then the trials, Betty running in bare feet, to choose the New South Wales team to compete at the inaugural Australian School Boys’ and School Girls’ Athletics Championships in Tasmania.

In the trials, Betty equalled one record, she broke another, and her times were as good as those of the senior girls who were competing, even though some were three and four years older than she was. The trials were held on the lightening-fast grass track, adjacent to this sporting theatre, then called the Sydney Sports Ground. Betty’s world of track and field was beginning to take shape. She duly went to Hobart and won the Under 14 100 yards. June was boss. And, as Betty would say, her word was law. It was that same Wests Club that spawned two greats of Australian track and field, the remarkable Marlene Mathews and the hurdler Gloria Cooke. Gloria, a finalist in the Melbourne Olympics in 1956 in the hurdles, where we had three Australian girls in the final out of six.

Marlene and Betty were to become close friends, but deadly rivals. Season after season they fought it out and world record followed world record. June Ferguson pointed out to Betty early that while Betty knew nothing about the art of sprinting, she had one or two good points in her favour and one was the good high knee action and a long raking stride. And one other little thing –she always ran with her mouth wide open. This, of course, became a trademark. Many people, over the years, criticised Betty for this, saying it forced her to take in too much air and increased her wind resistance, but it didn’t seem to affect her performance too much. Betty was often asked if she ever caught flies in her mouth, but she once said that she trapped a few now and then, but a few flies and a handful of critics would not make her change what came naturally. She was 13 when she first started training seriously and worked out two nights a week for an hour and a half. It is extraordinary to note that when Betty came home from the Australian School Boys’ and School Girls’ Championships in Tasmania in 1951, she went straight into her first season of inter-club athletics and there started competing against Fleur Mellor, who, most sports writers thought, was going, eventually, to succeed Marjorie Jackson, ‘The Lithgow Flash’, as Australia’s champion woman sprinter.

Fleur was two years older than Betty, but they had some terrific battles. It was the 220 yards which Betty always favoured. And in that first inter-club season, Betty ran the 220 yards in 25.1 seconds, which was an Australian Junior record and the first time her name went into Australia’s record books. She left school relatively early and she and Marie went to work in a factory making baby clothes. They hated it. Marie, ‘Midge’, took a job as a dentist’s receptionist and stayed there until she was married. But Betty chose to work for her Dad, taking slips from shrubs and trees and sewing them into sand boxes. She also bred and sold budgerigars and she had a stack of goldfish. And she spent lots of free time at night making her own clothes.

Betty first, Christa Stubnick, a typist with the East German Police Force, was second and the great Marlene Mathews was third in both events. And then, of course, the controversy over the relay. The Australian team was Shirley Strickland, Norma Croker, Fleur Mellor and Betty. Marlene Mathews was omitted.44.9 seconds –gold and a world record. Oddly enough, just before the closing ceremony of the Melbourne Olympics, Betty flew home to Sydney to run in a match race between an American team and a composite team from the British Commonwealth countries and the Australian winning team from the Games. Strickland, Croker, Mellor and Cuthbert lowered the world 4x110 yards record to 45.6. And then Marlene replaced Shirley Strickland and they ran the 4x220 yards relay to set another world record. So when the New South Wales members of the team arrived at Kingston Smith Airport after the Olympics –the reception was astonishing. A few days later, the city of Parramatta gave Betty a reception, perched in a shining Rolls Royce, June Ferguson, the coach, sitting beside her and nearly 50,000 people were cheering.

Not long after the Games, Betty had a camellia named after her and she was depicted on a stamp in a commemorative series issued by, of all places, the Dominican Republic in the West Indies. One of eight showing winners of major events at the Games. Betty found all the attention very flattering, but she found it draining –she felt her identity was disappearing. She was no longer Betty Cuthbert the ordinary girl, but Betty Cuthbert the athlete. As she once said, many people would probably have wallowed in the limelight, but frankly, she loathed it. It is not that she did not appreciate what people did for her, she did. But she wished she could have been just one of the crowd, watching someone else up on that official platform. Betty was an Olympic champion before being a champion of her own state. But it was back to the inter-club championships of 1957 and 1958 and at the State titles in 1958, Betty equalled Marjorie Jackson’s world record for 100 yards of 10.4.A week later, she ran the 220 yards in 23.5, to lower her own world record.

She had now broken four world records in the space of four weeks and held every world sprint record in 1958, except the 100 metres .Yet such was the nature of the talent amongst Australian women that a couple of months later in the Australian Championships in March 1958, Marlene wiped out two of Betty’s world records in the space of 48 hours –10.3 and 23.4 –and Betty was a few feet behind. The 1958 Empire Games, as they were called, at Cardiff, were a disappointment for Betty. It was just after that when Herb Elliot, Betty Cuthbert and her coach June Ferguson made a trip through Europe. Betty ran in Oslo and won the 100 and the 200, but then went to Gutenberg in Germany, where she was persuaded to run in the 400 metres, because it was the only event on the program for women. It was the first time Betty had ever run the distance –she had not trained for it –and she ran 54.4 seconds, which was the fastest time in the world.1958. Rome in 1960 was something of a disaster. Betty missed a lot of competition with injury and in the quarter finals of the 100 metres, the hamstring played up again and Betty was eliminated.

Doctors wanted her to pull out of the 200 in Rome. She kept talking until they agreed she could warm up. But on the morning of the heats, she quickened up on a couple of run-throughs, the pain came back and the Rome Olympics were over for Betty Cuthbert. Scratched from the 200 metres and the relay. She wrote at that time, “I hated being a public figure to be looked at, talked about and pointed out every time I stepped outside my own front door. I have been secretly nursing that hatred for four long years, ever since my wins in the Melbourne Games. Few knew how I felt. I’d never whispered a word to anybody but my family and closest friends, but it finally became unbearable. There were few places I could go without people recognising me, wanting to touch me, shake my hand or get my autograph. It got to the point where I didn’t want to go out. I realised that being a successful athlete went hand-in-hand with being a public figure, but how I wished it hadn’t. I wanted to become just an ordinary girl like ‘Midge’.”

So Betty conferred with June Ferguson and told her that she was going to retire after Rome. One afternoon, about 14 months after she retired, Betty was working at her nursery when it suddenly occurred to her that she might need to take up athletics again. She could not get it out of her mind. She said there was a voice in her head that kept saying, over and over, run again, run again, run again. She fought the voice for two months and said “Eventually I could not sleep at night. I realised it was more than just an idea. Somehow I knew it was God speaking to me. One night in my bedroom, the voice said ‘run again’ and this time I surrendered. ‘Okay, you win’, I said, ‘I’ll run again.’” From that point until she retired in Tokyo in 1964, she was never happier in the sport. The long trek back began in 1962. And this is an aspect of Betty Cuthbert’s achievements that has never been alluded to.

Obviously, she had been out of competition for some time. Many people believed she could not come back. The Australian Championships had already been held. Marlene had retired after Rome, others had drifted out of the sport, there was a whole flock of new girls and Betty was trying to qualify for Perth in 1962 and on a very wet track. At the Commonwealth Games selection trials, Betty put paid to the notion that they never come back by winning the 100 and coming second in the 220 yards. And she left for Perth, hoping for her first Commonwealth Games success, following the disappointments of Cardiff. But she found Perth like an oven. She talked about winds like blast furnaces, blowing in off the Nullabor Plain. When the Duke of Edinburgh opened the Games on 22 November 1962, the thermometer was over 32 degrees in the shade, 39.8 at noon two days later. When Betty ran the heats and semi-finals of the 100, on the floor of the stadium it was 65 degrees. Betty failed.

In the semi-finals, she beat only one girl home in the 100, running no faster than she had run at school. She made it to the final of the 220 yards, but came fifth. All sorts of reasons were volunteered, but what is forgotten in all of this was the women’s 4x110 yards relay. Betty wanted to withdraw from the team, fearing she would let the girls down. The relay was on the last day of the Games –England was the team to beat. And by the time the second change was made, England were well clear. By the time the last English runner, Betty Moore, took the baton, England were five metres in front of Australia and Cuthbert set off. I remember, clearly, the call of Oliver Drake-Brockman. After all, Betty Cuthbert had failed in the sprints and it was a foregone conclusion that Betty Moore would run away with the gold medal. And suddenly Drake-Brockman called “Here comes Cuthbert...”.And with every stride, the old Cuthbert swung into action and she gathered Betty Moore up, metres away from the line, then shoulder to shoulder, then one last desperate kick by Cuthbert and Australia had won the gold. I rank it as one of the greatest relay legs ever run by an Australian athlete. Perth in 1962 and 40,000 at the stadium cheered and clapped for minutes after the race was over. In spite of the disappointments in the 100 and the 200, she had no intention of retiring. And then, in 1963, at a holiday resort near Newcastle, Lake Lodge, with June and Jack Ferguson, June, the coach, June bluntly said to Betty, you’re going to run the 440 yards when we go back. At that point, the event wasn’t even on the Olympic program. Betty went back to inter-club, adding the 440 yards to the 100 and 220 yards. So at the New South Wales Championships in 1963, Betty Cuthbert, won the 440 yards in 54.7 –a respectable time today. And then she won the 100 and 220 yards and I don’t think any woman or man has ever won the 100, 200 and 400 at the state titles. By that stage, the great Dixie Willis from Western Australia was the opposition and Judy Amoore, later to become Judy Pollock from Victoria.
Betty was invited to run in the Moomba Festival in Melbourne. The organisers wanted her to run in the 100 yards and the 440 yards. She wanted as many runs under her belt as she could get. It is 1963, the year before Tokyo. Judy and Dixie were in the 400 and all of them had times around about the 54 second mark. The world record was 53.7.Dixie was a magnificent 800 metres and 880 yards runner and the holder of both world records. Betty won the 100 in 10.7.The 440 yards was an hour later. The great Cuthbert put paid to both Dixie Willis and Judy Amoore and though her legs felt like jelly at the finish, she heard the announcement that she’d broken two world records –the 400 metres in 53.1 and then the 440 yards, which is a little bit longer, in 53.5.Two world records. And that took her off to the Australian Championships in 1963.

And in the 440 yards final, Dixie and Betty hit the line, as the commentators say, locked together.53.3 seconds –knocking two-tenths of a second off the world record Betty had set 11 days before. She had set three world records in two successive races. Of course, Tokyo in 1964 we know, but not the full story. Betty had an awful foot injury and she could not compete for months. Everything looked desperate, until she ran into a Bondi chiropodist, John Nolan. He diagnosed the pain that she’d endured for months and months and which responded to nobody, as a bone out of joint in her foot. Betty couldn’t believe it, but Nolan worked wonders. And in 1964, on 2 October, she was off to Tokyo. The first time ever the 400 metres for women had been included in the Olympics –and it was a red-hot field, dominated, so the critics said, by the British runner, Ann Packer and, of course, the Australian, Judy Amoore. Dixie was only contesting the 800 metres.

Ann Packer ran 52.7 in the semi-finals and the world believed they were watching the inaugural champion. But as Betty said, when the final came, it was the race in which she ran out of athletics and into history. Even though Betty had broken the world record 18 months before the Tokyo Olympics, her performances going in to Tokyo had not been startling. The newspaper critics hardly gave her a mention when discussing prospects for the gold medal. And Ann Packer, the British 400 and 800 metre runner was a red-hot favourite. Luckily, Betty had Judy Amoore, her teammate, on the outside. And in Lane 6, further out, Ann Packer. There was a wind down the back, which means there was a wind against them in the home straight. And Betty turned slightly in front of Ann Packer. She described the wind as “like an invisible hand pushing against me”. Her legs got heavier as the line edged closer. She felt Packer right on her heels, but knew she must have been just as tired as Betty was.

And Betty was not going to be the first to give in. Astride from the tape, Betty knew she’d won. The fastest time she’d ever run for the distance and only a tenth of a second outside the world record.52.1 seconds. Betty said, subsequently “That short space of time sealed my fate in athletics. After 13 years of running, it was all over. I’d made up my mind that if I won, I would never run again.” As she said, athletics had helped turn her from a shy, uncertain school girl into a confident, responsible woman. And through athletics, she’d learned to accept defeat as easily as victory and to face up to problems and challenges instead of turning from them. Betty tried many things after track and field, including fostering the belief that coaching young children and encouraging fitness amongst women were important goals. She started fitness classes for women at the Harbord Diggers Club, near Manly, and drove about 17 miles to attend the classes three times a week. The challenge of getting people into good health.

Betty tried coaching and, in fact, one of her athletes made the Commonwealth Games in Edinburgh in 1970, but I remember Betty telling me how disappointed she felt that the athlete did not share the same commitment as the coach. Betty said at the time that she couldn’t bring herself to coach anybody as wholeheartedly as she had coached this young girl. Basically, it was not for her. But it was in Edinburgh at those Games that she felt, in her words, that “something was not quite right with my health.” She felt tired, almost exhausted. She once said that multiple sclerosis is like a dark shadow that crosses your path on a warm sunny day and then moves away again. At first, you hardly notice it –it doesn’t cause immediate change in your life, but is far more subtle. it is almost impossible to say at exactly what moment it manifests itself in a person. She thought her tiredness at the beach was due to the heat –she said nothing. it was the first unexplained thing that had happened to her. Earlier, in 1969, she noticed a tingling in her hands –she was 31.

A pins and needles sensation if she walked any distance. Those sensations occurred in her legs and her feet. One day, after working in the nursery, she tried to clean her fingernails with a nail file –she got the pins and needles feeling. There was no explanation for unrelated feelings in her body. Then, before long, she was feeling tired all the time. And eventually the list of symptoms became too big to ignore. She wanted to deny the whole thing and believe it would go away of its own accord, but the warning signs were too insistent. She made the unpleasant trip to the doctor. The first doctor told her it was either glandular fever or rubella, German measles. With her long-standing interest in natural health methods, she thought she might be able to cure the symptoms herself. But they remained and became even more disturbing. She couldn’t catch or hold a medicine ball thrown at her during a fitness class. In one test, she was asked to bring her index fingers together in front of her body –she couldn’t.

Test followed test. Doctors prescribed Vitamin B12.She continued to work, was interested in the sporting world and sporting goods and got a job with Adidas. Indeed, she went to the Munich Olympics in 1972 as part of the company’s international promotions team. By 1973 she felt relatively free from the M.S. symptoms. And so the dilemma continued. It was a silent disease –very few spoke the truth to Betty and she told very few about how she really felt. She actually discovered that her GP, her neuro-physician, whom she saw in 1969 and the eye specialist, because she had trouble with her vision, suspected she had M.S. but no-one told her. There was a wall of silence from the medical profession. M.S. is a notoriously hard disease to diagnose and there are no easy answers for a physician when he or she must decide whether or not to tell the patient. Betty left Adidas and the great Ron Clarke offered her a job with Le Coq Sportif to open a branch office in New South Wales.

The tasks included taking orders for garments and setting up new outlets. But her back, and then her right leg, started playing up and she knew something serious was wrong, but she wouldn’t let on to anybody that she was ill. In 1978, the organisers of the annual Walk Against Want asked Betty to participate in their walkathon. She thought it was a great idea. But the day was hotter than usual. After three kilometres, her back started to ache and she felt uncomfortable but kept going. Then her right leg began to kick out and she had to quit. Multiple sclerosis is such, and Betty learnt this, that sufferers in remission must always do things in moderation. Betty had gone past her safety point. So at this time, May 1978, Betty was 40 and she knew that something seriously was wrong. She started attending Marrickville Hospital for acupuncture treatment twice a week –it did little to relieve the symptoms.

Then Betty was rung by the Reverend Graham Hardy of St Stephen’s Uniting Church in Macquarie Street, asking Betty if she would read the lesson at a lunchtime service. She was introduced to the congregation. She wondered whether he suspected her illness. But she read the bible’s words on the race of life from 1Corinthians 9:24-27-“Do you not know that in a race, all the runners compete, but only one receives the prize. So run that you may obtain it. Every athlete exercises self-control in all things. They do it to receive a perishable wreath. But we are imperishable. Well, I do not run aimlessly, I do not box as one beating the air, but I pummel my body and subdue it, lest after preaching to others I myself should be disqualified. ”Betty found that immensely relevant. She wasn’t running aimlessly, but she didn’t quite know when the race would end. The Reverend Hardy then preached a sermon on disappointment, which, as he told the congregation, could make you either bitter or better. And arguing that there are always reasons for disappointment in life. When it happens, he said, God opens the windows and presents solutions from a different viewpoint.

Betty felt the words had been chosen specifically for her. It was at this time that Betty received an invitation from the New South Wales government to become the first woman member of the Sydney Cricket Ground Trust, where she served from 1978 to 1980.She was struggling, albeit full of determination. The years became a continuing story of hope and frustration, of effort and sorrow. Of people coming into her life to help her and of the uncontrollable emotions that raged within her. Sometimes, her faith was stretched to the limit. When it finally became clear that she could no longer remain in the work force, she applied for a government invalid pension. At 41 years of age, she found it a bitter bill to swallow. But even more bitter was the discovery that applying for the pension involved an interview process that she considered invasive, humiliating and degrading. She would say that after trying to be a good ambassador for Australia for so many years, she felt as though she had been tossed on the scrap heap.

The Department of Social Security had investigated her and found that the interest from her bank savings was beyond what was permitted under their rules. Fortunately, public outrage rectified the situation, but no-one of her standing, or any standing, should have been treated in this way. Yet happiness and goodness followed. She found respite and relief when she moved to Lismore. She loved the animals, she loved the space, she loved the silence and she loved the privacy. She found being a public person very difficult. Of Lismore, she said she wasn’t devoid of friendship, she had neighbours across the road and down the road and they helped her with washing and ironing. The world knew she was suffering from multiple sclerosis and while she found public knowledge of that difficult, she was forever optimistic about the future. She was often asked what it was like to have M.S. and she had three pictures which captured the feeling, one of which was the rose. She said imagine a bright and healthy rose in your garden in the morning light, sparkling with fine, misty dew.

Pick that rose and carry it inside your house, put it in a vase without water and leave it to wilt. Sometimes M.S. is like that. Faith had always been an important part of Betty’s life, even though she wasn’t religious and even though she wasn’t a regular church-goer. But she said what she went through in those days leading up to Tokyo taught her a lesson that she never forgot. Each set-back had a specific meaning. She said it showed her that no matter how awful something is at the moment, good can come of it. And she determined after Tokyo she would never lose faith again. Through the dark and desperate days when multiple sclerosis was a sinister but unknown shadow across her life, she held on to God. It was partly, she said, because of the faith that life is good, however much adverse circumstances seemed to say the opposite. And if she hadn’t had that faith, she used to say, I don’t know what I would have slipped in to. “If I hadn’t had anything to believe in, I would have had nothing.”

Betty would say that she’d talk to God every day about so many things –He was there to thank and to believe in and to hope for and to ask things of. She said in one way, it was like having a mother you could always go and talk to. Of her Mum, she said “She’d never let me down. She’d gone through everything with me emotionally and provided me with the greatest possible support at all times.” Betty said “There was a deep, invisible bond between us, based on love and trust.” And God was the same. Betty once wrote “Having Him there to listen to me was more important than I could express.” On one day, Wednesday 1 May 1985, Betty changed direction. She had been nominated for an award as Single of the Year and she had won it. Reverend Gordon Moyes came to Lismore to speak at the Town Hall. Betty thought she would go along. At the end, he invited people who wanted to become Christians to go out the front and Betty thought I’m already a Christian...so that is not for me.

Reverend Moyes issued a second invitation and added “There are some private practicing Christians here” and the words had a remarkable effect on Betty. She started to tremble, she said her heart started to thump, she said she knew she had to go forward. And when she did, the Reverend Moyes prayed for her. She said she didn’t understand what it meant, but she realised that she had been “born again”. She had no idea, this was 1985, Betty was47, and she had no idea what the phrase meant. She thought it was a cliché in the wider world. A straight-forward description of something rather wonderful. But, as she said, the phrase came from the bible, where Jesus says “I tell you the truth, no-one can see the Kingdom of God unless he is born again.” She said in all her 47 years, she had never heard such a thing before. Pieces, for her, started to fall into place. She said it was better than winning four gold medals –“To be born again is the best medal anyone can ever get. And you don’t have to train for it.”

She often spoke of an old story to prove what she believed was God’s joy at saving people. The story went “What do you think, if a man has 100 sheep and one of them has gone astray, does he not leave the 99 on the hills and go in search of the one that went astray. And if he finds it, truly, I say to you, he rejoices over it more than the 99 that never went astray. So it is not the will of your Father who is in heaven that one of these little ones should perish. ”From Matthew 18, Verses 12-14. It was during this period in Lismore that, yet again, Betty felt that change was upon her. She had visited a small Pentecostal church in Lismore. One of her Sydney friends, Dixie Treharne, the wife of the yachtsman Hugh Treharne, asked Betty if she would accompany Dixie to Perth for the opening of a Pentecostal church over there called Rhema Family Church. Betty had the same kind of urge to go that she had when she moved from Sydney to Lismore. She met Margaret Court, one of the greatest tennis players the world has seen, who was involved with the Pentecostal church.

Betty came back home to Sydney and told her Mum and her family this was something she wanted to do, to go to W.A. The multiple sclerosis now had many manifestations. She had difficulty writing –the muscles in her right hand and fingers were no longer up to the task and it required an extreme effort to hold a pen and scratch a few barely-legible words onto the paper. In 1991, Margaret Court announced she was going to establish Margaret Court Ministries for the purpose of fulfilling what she believed was God’s call on her life to preach the gospel. And Margaret began holding meetings in halls, community centres and other public buildings around Perth. Sometimes, Betty went along and one night she was sitting by the book sales table when a woman about her age came up and introduced herself as Rhonda Gillam. Betty remembered the name, because a friend had told her some 12 months earlier that this was a person who would like to meet her. Rhonda and her husband Keith lived in Mandurah. Betty had bought a little place in Perth. Rhonda explained that Keith was away at a golf tournament and would Betty like to stay with her for the weekend.

Betty agreed. And so this remarkable friendship began. Betty said “When I found Rhonda, I found a special friend. One with all the same interests that I had. And I felt like her family was my family too.” So Betty moved to Mandurah in 1991, straight into a little unit which she bought with the proceeds from the sale of her place in Como, Perth, a minute and a half around the corner from where Rhonda and Keith lived. A new phase in her life was beginning on other fronts. She accepted an invitation to fly to Sydney to name a new three million dollar commuter catamaran “The Betty Cuthbert”, to sail up and down the Parramatta River every day, right past Betty’s old house in Drummoyne. It was the first time the public had seen Betty in a wheelchair and it was a shock. Daily life, by now, was absorbing most of her energy. She was grateful for the strength and dedication that Rhonda put into looking after her. Then a letter arrived, inviting Betty to Melbourne for the Australian Sports Hall of Fame Champions Dinner. She asked Rhonda to write back saying she couldn’t.

The invitation followed a dreadful mini-tornado in Mandurah, which smashed the block of units in which Betty was living. Her little unit was a tangled mess of bricks and wood and smashed furniture and glass, but amazingly, but not to Betty, none of the memorabilia was destroyed. None of her personal belongings, even though the little garden shed out the back was blown so far away it was never found. It was the same day that it was announced that Sydney had won the 2000 Olympic Games. Damage was assessed, insurance claims were made and Betty’s unit was redesigned and rebuilt with many improvements to help her with her new living, including passages wide enough for her scooter to go right through to the bedroom. So she was off to Melbourne. It was a gala night. Dawn Fraser was there, along with Judy Patching, Julius Patching, who was the starter for all of Betty’s races at the 1956 Olympics, and she discovered that the purpose of the night was to induct Betty as a Living Legend of the Hall of Fame. Betty had no inkling it was happening. As they were starting dessert, the MC uttered Betty’s name, a spotlight came upon her and 700 people burst into applause.

Someone grabbed the wheelchair and pushed Betty up onto the stage and for the next 30 minutes she sat there in tears as they said beautiful things about her. I remember in 1996, that remarkably generous man, John Singleton, joined with a few of us to raise money, a virtual testimonial lunch, for Betty and almost $300,000 was raised. Betty was immensely grateful and after consultation with many whom you should be able to trust, bought a block of land at Mandurah, with gum trees and a dam. She wanted to share with others what she was able to provide. Then, a “client” arrived on the scene, interested in looking at property. He was charming company, said he was a born-again Christian, told his story. He appeared sincere and enthusiastic and shared Betty’s dream of helping others. Betty had people check the bloke out, but it was all happening in a whirlwind. He proposed setting up a trust fund to raise money to finance her plans for the block of land. A Perth barrister was involved.

The bloke came every day to her home. Then he said he had come across a clothing business that had collapsed and had bought it for next to nothing, so they should invest in that. And so the story went on. And the bills started arriving. And the bloke disappeared. And Betty and Rhonda were left in very significant debt. Betty subsequently found that when this fellow was speaking to influential people on his mobile phone in her presence, he’d actually been speaking to no-one. Nonetheless, Betty often remembered the verse from Matthew in the bible “Everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or lands for my name’s sake will receive a hundred fold and inherit eternal life.” Betty felt, in spite of multiple sclerosis, that is what happened to her. Then, Sydney won the Olympic Games and Rupert Murdoch’s NewsCorp invited Betty, Rhonda and Keith to attend the Games as their special guests. There was much speculation as to whether Betty would light the cauldron.

All sorts of names were volunteered – Murray Rose, Herb Elliot, Marjorie Jackson, Shirley Strickland, Dawn Fraser –but it is part of the Olympic tradition to keep people guessing. And so it was, on this occasion, in 2000, when the night arrived and the announcer said “Ladies and gentlemen, celebrating 100 years of women’s participation in the Olympic Games, the Olympic Flame, carried by Betty Cuthbert and Raelene Boyle” and the crowd erupted. Raelene started to push Betty around the running track, followed by the next runner, who was Dawn, then to Shirley Strickland, to Shane Gould, to Debbie Flintoff-King and then to the remarkable Catherine Freeman, waiting at the foot of the huge podium. When Betty returned to Mandurah to her home, fan mail increased. She lived one day at a time, under the extraordinary care of Rhonda. And here we are today with a crushing reminder of our own mortality, as we honour the great Betty Cuthbert. It is hard to believe and yet we are here to celebrate, not to grieve. The source of the celebration is simple. Betty would not want us celebrating the gold medals, she would want us to celebrate the journey in which she found, through adversity, a deep faith.

And she would want us to celebrate that in death, as in life, that faith will guide us to the appropriate destination. Betty would want her example not just to inspire those to be quick runners if they have a natural talent, but rather to inspire those who have a struggle in life to find the courage to keep going with what you have and to never give up hope. Betty read often the verse by Frances Ridley Havergal –a 19thcentury poet, who wrote:

“Take my life and let it be
Consecrated, Lord, to Thee.
Take my moments and my days,
Let them flow in ceaseless praise.
Take my hands, and let them move
At the impulse of Thy love;
Take my feet, and let them be
Swift and beautiful for Thee.
Take my silver and my gold,
Not a mite would I withhold;
Take my intellect, and use
Every pow’r as Thou shalt choose.”

Betty Cuthbert. Today, we honour you with the same depth of emotion as we have loved you.
And that will be forever.

For Kobe & Gianna Bryant: 'Babe, you take care of our Gigi', by Vanessa Bryant - 2020

24 February 2020, Staples Center, Los Angeles, USA

Vanessa Bryant spoke movingly about her husband, Kobe, and daughter, Gianna, Monday at the Staples Center in Los Angeles.

Thank you. Thank you all so much for being here. It means so much to us. First, I’d like to thank everyone for coming today.

The outpouring of love and support that my family has felt from around the world has been so uplifting. Thank you so much for all your prayers.

I’d like to talk about both Kobe and Gigi but I’ll start with my baby girl first.

My baby girl — Gianna Bryant is an amazingly sweet and gentle soul. She was always thoughtful. She always would kissed me goodnight, kissed me good morning. There were a few occasions where I was absolutely tired from being up with Bianca and Capri and I thought she had left school without saying goodbye. I'd text and say 'no kiss?' And Giana would reply with 'Mama, I kissed you but you were asleep, and I didn’t want to wake you.'

She knew how much her morning and evening kisses meant to me, and she was so thoughtful to remember to kiss me every day.

She was daddy’s girl, but I know she loved her mama. And she would always tell me and show me how much she loved me. She was one of my very best friends. She loved to bake. She loved putting a smile on everyone’s face.

Last August, she made a beautiful birthday cake for her daddy. It had fondant and looked like it had blue agate crystals. Kobe’s birthday cake looked like it was professionally decorated. She made the best chocolate chip cookies. She loved watching cooking shows and "Cupcake Wars" with me, and she loved watching "Survivor" and NBA games on TV with her daddy. She also loved watching Disney movies with her sisters.

GiGi was very competitive, like her daddy. But Gianna had a sweet grace about her. Her smile was like sunshine. Her smile took up her entire face, like mine. Kobe always said she was me.

She had my fire, my personality and sarcasm. She was tender and loving on the inside. She had the best laugh, it was infectious. It was pure and genuine.

Kobe and Gianna naturally gravitated towards each other. She had Kobe’s ability to listen to a song and have all the lyrics memorized after listening to the song a couple of times; it was their secret talent.

She was an incredible athlete. She was great at gymnastics, soccer, softball, dance and basketball. She was incredible dancer too. She loved to swim, dance, do cartwheels and jumps into our swimming pool and GiGi loved her TikTok dances.

GiGi was confident, but not in an arrogant way. She loved helping and teaching other people things at school she offered the boys' basketball coaches to help give the boys' basketball team some pointers, like the triangle offense.

She was very much like her daddy, in that they both liked helping people learn new things and master them. They were great teachers. Gigi was very sweet. She always made sure everyone was okay. She was our shepherd. She always kept our family together. She loved family traditions; family movie night and game night on vacations were important to her.

Gigi always looked out for everyone. She was very much in tune with our feelings and wanted the best for us. Gianna was smart. She knew how to read, speak and write Mandarin. She knew Spanish. She had great grades and kept them up, all while becoming an incredible basketball player.

She was president of school spirit, on student council. She was directors assistant for her school play, just like her big sister. She was looking forward to graduating eighth grade and moving on to high school with her big sister Natalia. I’m so happy she was given the opportunity to know that she was accepted to the same high school, she was really happy.

Gianna made us all proud, and she still does.

Gianna never tried to conform. She was always herself. She was a nice person, a leader, a teacher, wearing a white T, black leggings, a denim jacket, white high-top Converse, and a flannel tied around her waist with straight hair was her go-to style.

She has so much swag and rhythm ever since she was a baby. She gave the best hugs and the best kisses. She had gorgeous soft lips like her daddy. She would hug me and hold me so tight.

I could feel her love me. I loved the way she looked up at me while hugging me. It was as if she was soaking me all in. We love each other so much. I miss her so much.

She was so energetic. I couldn't keep up with her energy. She lapped Natalia and I on a track once. She was about 6 years old. We let her have a head start. She still bested us.

I miss her sweet kisses, I miss her cleverness, I miss her sarcasm, her wit, and that adorable sly side smile followed with a grin and a burst of laughter. We shared the same cat-that-ate-the-canary grin.

Gigi was sunshine. She brightened up my day every day. I miss looking at her beautiful face. She was always so good, a rule follower. I knew I could always count on her to do the right thing.

She was the most loving daughter, thoughtful little sister, and silly big sister. She happily helped carry the little's diaper bag or played with them. She liked helping me with Bianca and Capri. Bianca loved going to the playground, swimming and jumping on the trampoline with Gigi.

I used to tell Gigi, CoCo considered her favorite sister. Capri would smile from ear to hear when Gigi walked into the room, and Capri reminds me a lot of Gianna; they look alike and just smile with their whole face, pure joy.

We will not be able to see Gigi go to high school with Natalia and ask her how her day went. We didn't get the chance to teach her how to drive a car. I won't be able to tell her how gorgeous she looks on her wedding day. I'll never get to see my baby girl walk down the aisle, have a father-daughter dance with her daddy, dance on the dance floor with me or have babies of her own.

Gianna would have been an amazing mommy. She was very maternal ever since she was really little.

Gigi would have most likely become the best player in the WNBA. She would have made a huge difference. She would have made a huge difference for women's basketball. Gigi was motivated to change the way everyone viewed women in sports.

She wrote papers in school defending women and wrote about how the unequal pay difference for the NBA and WNBA leagues wasn't fair. And I truly feel she made positive changes for the WNBA players now, since they knew Gigi's goal was to eventually play in the WNBA.

I'm still so proud of Gianna. She made a difference and was kind to everyone she met in the 13 years she was here on Earth. Her classmates shared many fond memories about Gianna with us and those stories reminded me that Gianna loved and showed everyone that no act of kindness is ever too small to make a difference in someone's life.

She was always, always, always, considerate of others and their feelings. She was a beautiful, kind, happy, silly, thoughtful and loving daughter and sister. She was so full of life and had so much more to offer this world. I cannot imagine life without her.

Mommy, Natalia, Bianca, Capri and daddy love you so much, Gigi. I will miss your sweet handmade cards, your sweet kisses, and your gorgeous smile. I miss you, all of you, every day. I love you.

Kobe was known as a fierce competitor on the basketball court. The greatest of all time, a writer, an Oscar winner, and the Black Mamba. But to me, he was Kobe-Kobe, my boo-boo, my bae-boo, my Papi Chulo. I was his Vivi, his principessa, his reina, his queen MambaI couldn't see him as a celebrity, nor just an incredible basketball player.

He was my sweet husband, and the beautiful father of our children. He was mine. He was my everything. Kobe and I have been together since I was 17 and a half years old. I was his first girlfriend, his first love, his wife, his best friend, his confidant and his protector.

He was the most amazing husband. Kobe loved me more than I could ever express or put into words. He was an early bird and I was a night owl. I was fire and he was ice and vice versa at times. We balanced each other out.

He would do anything for me. I have no idea how I deserved a man that loved and wanted me more than Kobe. He was charismatic, a gentleman, he was loving, adoring and romantic. He was truly the romantic one in our relationship and looked forward to Valentine's days and our anniversaries every year. He planned special anniversary trips and a special traditional gift for every year of our marriage. He even handmade my most treasured gifts.

He just thought outside the box and was so thoughtful, even while working hard to be the best athlete. He gifted me the actual notebook and the blue dress Rachel McAdams wore in "The Notebook" movie. When I asked him why he chose the blue dress, he said it was because it's a scene when Ally comes back to Noah.

We had hoped to grow old together like the movie. We really had an amazing love story. We loved each other with our whole beings — two perfectly imperfect people, making a beautiful family, and raising our sweet and amazing girls.

A couple weeks before they passed, Kobe sent me a sweet text and mentioned how he wanted to spend time together; just the two of us without our kids, because I'm his best friend first. We never got the chance to do it. We were busy taking care of our girls and just doing our regular, everyday responsibilities. But I'm thankful I have that recent text. It means so much to me.

Kobe wanted us to renew our vows. He wanted Natalia to take over his company, and he wanted to travel the world together. We had always talked about how we'd be the fun grandparents to our daughters' children. He would have been the coolest grandpa. Kobe was the MVP of girl dads, or MVD.

He never left the toilet seat up. He always told the girls how beautiful and smart they are. He taught them how to be brave and how to keep pushing forward when things get tough. And when Kobe retired from the NBA, he took over dropping off and picking up our girls from school, since I was at home pregnant with Bianca and just recently home nursing Capri.

When Kobe was still playing, I used to show up an hour early to be the first in line to pick up Natalia and Gianna from school, and I told him he couldn't drop the ball once he took over. He was late one time, and we most definitely let him know that I was never late. So we showed up 1 hour and 20 minutes early after that.

He always knew there was room for improvement and wanted to do better. He happily did carpool and enjoyed spending time in the car with our girls. He was a doting father, a father that was hands-on and present. He helped me bathe Bianca and Capri almost every night. He would sing them silly songs in the shower and continue making them laugh and smile as he lathered them in lotion and got them ready for bed.

He had magic arms and could put Capri to sleep in only a few minutes. He said he had it down to a science: eight times up and down our hallway. He loved taking Bianca to Fashion Island and watch her play in the Koi pond area and loved taking her to the park.

Their most recent visit to the Koi pond was the evening before he and GiGi passed. He shared a love of movies and the breakdown of films with Natalia. He enjoyed renting out theatres and taking Natalia to watch the newest "Star Wars" movie or "Harry Potter" films.

And they would have movie marathons and he enjoyed every second of it. He loved your typical tearjerkers, too. He liked watching "Step Mom," "Steel Magnolias," and "Little Women."

He had a tender heart. Kobe somehow knew where I was at all times. Specifically, when I was late to his games. He would worry about me if I wasn't in my seat at the start of each game and would ask security where I was at the first time-out of the first quarter.

And my smartass would tell him that he wasn't going to drop 81 points within the first 10 minutes of the game. I think anyone with kids understands that sometimes we can't make it out the door on time. And eventually, he was used to my tardiness and balled out.

The fact that he could play on an intense professional level and still be concerned by making sure we made it to the game safely was just another example of how family came first to him.

He loved being Gianna's basketball coach. He told me he wished he would have convinced Natalia to play basketball so they could have spent even more time together.

But he also wanted her to pursue her own passion. He watched Natalia play in a volleyball tournament on her birthday, on January 19th, and he noticed how she's a very intelligent player. He was convinced she would have made a great point guard, with her vision of the court.

And he told me that he wanted Bianca and Capri to take up basketball when they get older, so he could spend just as much time with them as he did with GiGi. And Kobe always told Bianca and Capri that they were going to grow up and play basketball and 'mix they ass up.'

Now they won't have their daddy and sister here to teach them, and that is truly a loss I do not understand. But I'm so thankful Kobe heard CoCo say 'Dada.' He isn't going to be here to drop Bianca and Capri off at Pre-K or kindergarten. He isn't going to be here to tell me to 'get a grip, V,' when we have to leave the kindergarten classroom or show up to our daughter's doctor's visits for my own moral support.

He isn't going to be able to walk our girls down the aisle or spin me around on the dance floor while singing "PYT" to me. But I want my daughters to know and remember the amazing person, husband and father he was.

The kind of man that wanted to teach the future generations to be better and keep them from making his own mistakes. He always liked working and doing projects to improve kids' lives. He taught us all valuable lessons about life and sports through his NBA career, his books, his showed detail, and his Punies podcast series, and we're so thankful he left those lessons and stories behind for us.

He was thoughtful and wrote the best love letters and cards. And GiGi had his wonderful ability to express her feelings and take paper and make you feel her love through her words. She was thoughtful like him. They were so easy to love.

Everyone naturally gravitated towards them. They were funny, happy, silly, and they loved life. They were so full of joy and adventure. God knew they couldn't be on this Earth without each other. He had to bring them home to have them together.

Babe, you take care of our Gigi. And I got Nani, Bibi and Coco. We're still the best team. We love and miss you, Boo-Boo and GiGi. May you both rest in peace and have fun in Heaven until we meet again one day. We love you both, and miss you, forever and always. Mommy.

for Pat Summitt: 'Who is this woman', by Michelle Marciniak - 2016

30 June 2016, Thompson-Boling Arena, Tennessee, USA

There are 161 of us, Pat's former players … and any one of us could be standing up here today. I feel a great deal of humility and responsibility to give you a real sense of who Pat was to us.

We are all hurting. The sadness we are feeling is unexplainable because it seems so unfair. I ask myself why? Why Pat, Lord? Why did you pick her to fight this awful disease? And why did you take one of the finest women to ever set foot on this earth in a short five years?

We looked up to her. She was our coach and our role model, our mentor and our friend. She was a superhero. I can't help but ask these questions.

Honestly, I'm angry. That's how I feel. This disease is awful. Pat would still be coaching on the sidelines today if it weren't for Alzheimer's. I want to find a cure because it killed my coach. It killed her. That's reality.

But I guess that's just it. We are not in control of our final destiny. And we know from Pat's passing that we are never promised tomorrow.

This is where faith comes in and Pat had a ton of it. I have to admit that my road with Pat was not a smooth one but because she had faith, and so did I, I knew that her heart was always in the right place. And for that reason alone, I respected and trusted her.

All of us former players are the lucky ones. We've been given a blessing to have been coached by Pat, to learn from her, to watch her, to go into battle with her, to experience her presence in person through the good times and bad.

We ask ourselves, what are we to learn from this?

You know, we watched film endlessly with Pat. She wanted us to analyze, listen and learn. She would monitor and then wanted us to self-monitor. She would teach us and coach us in those film sessions and wanted us to own our mistakes so that we wouldn't make the same mistakes again.

Because of that we owned our successes and failures. She knew something we didn't and she guided us toward what she knew but always made us finish the last lap.

I believe with my whole heart that Pat would want us to be strong for her during these difficult days that led into and will depart from her death. I know for me personally, she hated when I started to cry. She used to always say, "Quit your cryin' Marciniak." And she said many times after being diagnosed, don't throw a pity party for me. She meant it. There was no room for excuses, not even good ones.

When I first arrived on campus, seeing how visible the Lady Vol program was and how public Pat expected us to be, I felt the need to share with Pat that I grew up with a speech impediment. I stuttered. Therefore I had a great fear of speaking and told her that I would not be comfortable speaking in public and introducing myself. Pat looked at me with her steely stare responded simple, concise and direct and told me to get over it.

I was stunned and offended at her lack of empathy but I learned later that she saw it as an opportunity for me to grow. And she tested me time and time again because from that point on when we would be in any setting and Pat was always the grand marshal of every event or dinner. Pat would say, "Do any of our players have anything to say. Michelle?"

She put me on the spot. She made me speak. She made me face my fears. My biggest accomplishment playing for Pat was not winning a national championship, it was speaking.

Speaking at the Sears trophy presentation and on ESPN immediately following our championship game. Speaking at the White House. Speaking as an entrepreneur and then speaking for Pat whenever I could when she was diagnosed with Alzheimer's.

The confidence she instilled within me to stand up and speak out was life changing. Pat helped me discover a voice I didn't know I had. If she did this for me, imagine what she did for the 160 other players.

This was Pat at her core. From the compassion she had for Chamique (Holdsclaw) to walk her through her illness to the endless support Pat gave me in being an entrepreneur. Pat was all about her players and finding out ways to help us become better people, better professionals post-career.

Pat had a way at finding just the perfect time to enter and re-enter our lives and offer love and support.

I think Kara (Lawson) said it best when she said that Pat lives in each of us every day.

As I thought about what I wanted to say today, I thought about you, Hazel, a mother who just lost her daughter. I thought about you Tommy and Charles and Kenneth and Linda, siblings who just lost their sister. I thought about you, Tyler, a son who just lost his mother.

As most people know, Tyler was nearly born in my living room during Pat's recruiting visit so we have always shared a special bond.

Tyler, as you might remember, we were at the Sports Illustrated Sportsman of the Year awards in 2011 just after Pat's diagnosis. You and Pat were sitting in the front row that night. I had written a tribute for her that I delivered at the ceremony. As I thought about what to say today, I went back to that tribute because to me, it captured the essence of who Pat was at her core. So here we go:

"Who is this woman"

A bond of everlasting proportion in 1990

A truly unique moment that you and I shared together

His name is Tyler

The amazing blessing you brought into this world

Your son kicking inside of you as you sat in my living room

Toughing it out, as you do with every aspect of your life

I thought, "Who is this woman?"

In my home, 9 months pregnant

Fighting nature to sacrifice for ... for what?

The answer came clear to me as I learned about who you are at your core.

Your sacrifice to sign a recruit in your condition went beyond the norm; it was about 'them', not 'you' Them being the people you were sacrificing for at the University of Tennessee who believed in you, who gave you the opportunity of your lifetime

Fighting for those who entrusted in you to do anything and everything you could to not only win championships but most importantly to influence lives — young and old — family, players, fans, friends, administration, colleagues, former coaches and teammates.

The legacy you built from the ground up was coming into play in my own living room as you chose to grind through the pains of labor and make a trip against the doctor's better judgment.

I was beginning to embark upon a journey in which I would come under the incredible influence of a classy, strong-willed woman in my life.

I soon learned this when I stepped foot on campus, in your office, on your court, into your world.

"Who is this woman?" continually crossed my mind after spending more time with you.

This woman is a fighter.

She's a competitor.

She doesn't accept mediocrity.

She's never satisfied.

I've never met anyone like her.

In her eyes, there was always more.

More perfection.

I didn't think I could ever get it right.

You made every day the greatest challenge of my life.

You made me start over each day.

Perfecting yesterday.

Never looking for tomorrow.

Taking care of today.

Repeating patterns of near perfection.

Just when I thought I was close to receiving your compliment.

You said do it again.

This time do it better.

"Who is this woman?" I thought over and over again.

So surprising to me was what came next.

In so many frustrating tears and sanity checks.

As I was experiencing growing pains like never before.

Searching for my own connection to perfection.

Trying to please you and feeling as if I was failing miserably at every turn.

What I received time and time again when I was at my absolute breaking point.

Was not a compliment from you.

Rather, you hugged my neck.

You cared.

You spent endless hours with me, teaching me.

You showed me you loved me through the time you spent with me.

You said to me, "You'll understand why I am doing this one day."

There's a bigger picture.

Hang in there.

I am pushing you because you can take it.

Because I believe in you.

Because I know you have what it takes.

You said, "Trust me."

I will not allow you to fail under my watch.

You said, I need for you to be tougher.

In my weaker moments, I asked you to ease up on me.

You said, stop your crying.

I cried harder.

I said, I don't think I can do this anymore.

You said, Yes you can, we're getting there.

You said, "Trust me." There's a reason for this.

In my own kicking and fighting in trying to understand what you were attempting to get out of me.

I was always listening. You had my attention.

You kept saying it will be worth it. I need for you to get through this with me.

"Who is this woman?" How did she command such a presence in my soul from the very moment we met, a presence that only intensified over the following months and years?

All the while, teaching me the greatest lessons of my life:

It wasn't about me.

It was about my teammates.

It was about the Tennessee program.

It was about others.

It was about showing up and bringing your best every single day.

Learning more.

Here comes the full circle.

You come into the Tennessee program as a superstar

And you leave as a champion, not just on the basketball court but in life

What a powerful revelation and feeling to understand the tremendous difference between the two.

You didn't just make us better; you made us the best at who we were trying to become.

You were not only being tough; you were teaching toughness.

You never did anything for your own glory; you worked your magic through selfless acts of kindness.

You didn't raise your voice just for the sake of it; you increased your tone to demand excellence.

You didn't rush any process, you taught patience and urgency through a painstaking refining regimen.

Not only were you a perfectionist; you were a master at sculpting your masterpiece.

For a woman who has accomplished what you have in basketball, you had every right to display arrogance; instead you displayed the most precious humility.

Together, we won. And won it all. Accomplishments we've all celebrated through all the days of our lives.

What I learned, though, is the one thing I carry with me as I remember you telling me that "I will understand one day."

Here it is:

Life is not about accomplishments, wins or losses; it's about investing in people and relationships.

The greatest reward in life is a result of sacrificing yourself for another human being in order to help them become their best.

I now see the bigger picture

Pat, you've sacrificed for us all and now it's our turn to pay it forward.

You fought the battle that allowed the game of basketball to be what it is today.

You fought the battle to create opportunities for us and you taught us how to win.

And you courageously fought the battle of Alzheimer's and publicly put a face to this dreadful disease so that the world will join us in the fight to find a cure.

Pat, we are so much better because of you. We do see who you were and from this day forward we will band together and tuck you in and carry you with us in our souls, forever.

For Hugh Weaver: 'The greensward field opens up before us and we have reached a special place', by Chris Weaver - 2020

6 January 2020, St John’s Anglican Church, Toorak, Melbourne, Australia

Unlike my father’s speeches, I’m not planning on speaking for two hours or using a slide presentation, but hopefully I do some justice to him all the same.

And I want to do justice to him because I owe him so much. He was a loving and extraordinarily generous man who gave me opportunities and possibilities unavailable to either him or his parents.

My father would never refer to himself as a self-made man, but in essence that is what he was. He was born into a family that valued education, intellect, hard work and generosity, but which was not wealthy by any stretch.

His father, Lloyd, worked in insurance while my father was growing up. It was a career, place and mindset a world away from his true love, which was farming at the Weaver home for the best part of a century, the Mallee town of Boort.

His mother, Olive, was a teacher whose intellect was keen and whose sense of practicality was finely honed. Dad was in many ways his mother’s child. At her funeral, my aunt stated that Olive “was a clever woman who admired people who did clever things”. It is a neat summation that remains an apt description of my father: a man who respected intellect and intellectual rigour very highly.

Dad often spoke about his childhood as being very happy. The family moved at intervals due to my grandfather’s commitments at Victoria Insurance – each move coinciding neatly with a chapter in my father’s life. He was born in Brighton; a pre-school boy in Woodend; a primary school pupil in Bendigo; and finally a high school student in Hamilton.

The Hamilton years were particularly profound. The Weavers moved to Hamilton when my father was 11 and the Western Districts town was to be the Elysian field to which his mind often returned. It was not, however, without its challenges and a watershed moment in Dad’s life occurred when he failed his matriculation at the first time of asking – a consequence of a bright boy being failed by an under-resourced system and his own immaturity. While he returned and passed at the second time of asking, the experience was profound: he became a tenacious student and, many years later, a committed and generous supporter of my own education. I don’t profess to have my father’s intellect, but I have benefitted enormously from his generosity and commitment to receiving a well-resourced education.

From school he transferred to Melbourne, where he was a resident at Queen’s College at the University of Melbourne. He originally embarked on a Science undergraduate degree, before transferring into Medicine. He graduated from Melbourne in 1970, worked as an intern at the Alfred Hospital and in late 1971 met Pamela Pettitt – his future wife.

It will never cease to amaze me that a man as profoundly unromantic as my father got lost in love’s mist so badly that he asked a woman to marry him after knowing her for just ten days. It amazed his own father even more when it turned out to be purely for love, and not because of any need for a shotgun wedding.

The next decade was a whirlwind of work, postdoctoral study and a long stint living in the United Kingdom. My parents lived overseas between early 1974 and January 1982, variously living in the Scottish town of Perth, the West Middlesex Hospital and a house they decided to buy on the spot in 1976 in the London suburb of Kew.

Dad’s diplomacy was generally positioned somewhere between Jeremy Clarkson and Sir Les Patterson. Channelling the wisdom of Australia’s famed cultural attaché, he once described the strike and inflation-riddled UK of the 1970s as being “almost a Third World Country – like Italy.” Yet they were emotionally (if not professionally) rewarding years, which my mother will talk about in greater detail and with great fondness.

Soon after returning to Melbourne, I was born: two days before the devastating Ash Wednesday bushfires, which had eerily similar consequences to current events. I am an only child, which in itself tells the tale of another long and at times deflating journey which my father undertook.

At this point, I believe I should state that my father’s persistence and resilience were remarkable characteristics, present at various stages in his life. They were the traits that ensured he made the most of his intellectual talents (in spite of resources) and which served him so well in two major illnesses: non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma in 2007 and the brain cancer which he fought stoutly for the best part of four years.

In the early 1990s, his resilience and adaptability enabled him to change careers, switching his practice from orthopaedic surgery to medico-legal assessments, principally diagnosis and assessment of workplace injuries. He worked assiduously, running a business in a field that frustrated him immensely, but which provided my mother and I with stability and security.

He was astonishingly generous, both in time and money. On the latter front, he spent several decades tutoring and assessing students in anatomy – a field in which he was passionate. His strong memory and keen eye for complexity suited him to this field and it was an ongoing source of frustration for him that Australian medical schools did not value anatomical teaching in the way that he expected it to be taught. He was a proud Fellow of two esteemed professional bodies – the Royal College of Surgeons, and its antipodean equivalent, the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons.

His lay interests were principally in biology, human history and natural history, with the latter field being crucial in his decision to undertake a Master of Philosophy after retirement. He was an unashamed Anglophile, whose life passion for Britain and its relationship with Australia informed many of his public talks and much of his private reading. In 1990, he spoke at Turkish universities about the Gallipoli landings and their significance to the First World War, while as recently as 2018 he spoke at the Medical History Society of Victoria. Dad had an eidetic memory for facts and a memory suited for lecturing. Less charitable observers might refer to it as pedantry, with a tendency to lecture.

This is the outline of the man whom many of you will know. The man I knew was not, in truth, much different. My father was not someone who adapted his persona greatly according to the audience. Instead, the changes in his behaviour were largely driven by subject matter. This meant that he could be passionate and pompous in his views, but never insipid or insincere.

Dad instilled in me the virtue of being present as a parent. For all the late nights and long shifts, he could still provide the best accounts and memories of my infancy, be the father who volunteered at junior sport and be the driver who ferried everyone else’s kids from one school or sporting commitment to another. He was generous to a fault with his time as I grew up, even when he had little of it to spare.

And he indulged my loves. Several people have mentioned to me his passion for the Melbourne Football Club, but in truth it was less his interest and more his commitment to build a relationship with his own father and his only son – two generations who have been far more stupidly invested that him in the fortunes of a mostly dreadful football team that occasionally hits purple patches of mediocrity.

Former St Kilda and North Melbourne coach Alan Killigrew said: “There are two great cons in life – communism and soccer.” My father would have agreed wholeheartedly with both elements of the statement, but it didn’t stop him from taking me to English lower division club Brentford (where the bathroom hand towels did not appear to have been changed since the Blitz), nor prevent him from encouraging me to keep touring European football grounds even once he’d been diagnosed with serious illness in 2007. He may not have understood the subject, but he always respected obsessions.

Occasionally our interests dovetailed, and we developed cherished memories of a trip to the UK in 1989, when a six-year-old boy became besotted with Westminster Abbey, the Natural History Museum and several other landmarks that represented the most keenly held of my father’s interests.

In recent years he came to know and love a daughter-in-law and three grandchildren, who formed a significant part in the final years of his life. My commitment to my children and my determination to build memories with them is driven by the realisation that it honours the same commitment that my father made to me.

I am grateful for all that my father provided me and very much intimidated by the scale on which it was offered. To be able to provide the same opportunities to my children is a major ambition, one which I know my father would rate highly.

No novel means more to me than ‘The Great Gatsby’ and no line resonates more than the final line: “So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.” Jay Gatsby believed in the green light at the end of the pier. I believe in the green field in my mind.

And in my mind, my father is leading me there. I am six years old, walking up a gravel slope clutching a copy of the Football Record and a homemade Demons streamer. Dad is holding my hand. The greensward field opens up before us and we have reached a special place. Thanks, Dad – I love you. And I always will.

For Gough Whitlam: 'He was an enhancer, an enlarger', by Malcolm Turnbull - 2014

21 October 2014, Canberra, Australia

I am very pleased and very honoured to associate myself with all of these fine speeches today remembering my good friend and constituent Gough Whitlam. Gough Whitlam was always at pains to remind me that he was my constituent, addressing me generally loudly and at a distance as 'My Member, My Member', just to make it quite clear that I had certain obligations to him.

We are here also to extend our condolences to Tony, Nick, Stephen and Catherine and their families. It is a time of great sadness for the Whitlam family and for Gough's friends but it should also be a time of joy. Gough lived to a great age and he had a great life. He was a big man with a big vision for a big country. He was an optimist. He was funny. He was witty. He always said, 'Don't say I'm funny; say I'm witty.' Well, he was witty and funny. In all of that we should celebrate his life.

We know Gough Whitlam's government was not unmarked by error. It was a controversial time and I will say a little bit about the influence of that on the Labor Party in a moment. We have to remember that the economic arguments of those days have largely receded into history. The truth is that nobody on our side or on the Labor side would agree with Gough's economic agenda. We would not agree with Billy McMahon's economic agenda. Life has moved on, but what is remembered is the myth of Gough or, as Gough would say, 'the mythos of Gough'. What is that thread, that narrative that emerges from history out of the humdrum daily grind of political argument? What is it? It is an enormous optimism and all of us admire that, whether we voted for him in the seventies or our parents voted for him, or whether we approved of what John Kerr did or not, all of that recedes. What people remember of Gough Whitlam is a bigness, generosity, an enormous optimism and ambition for Australia. That is something we can all subscribe to.

As many speakers have said, Gough was a great parliamentarian. He loved this place—not this chamber so much as the one he served in. He loved this parliament but he was also an active citizen. He did not just make his political contribution while he was a member of parliament; he continued to make a contribution to Australian politics and to public affairs and to cultural debate throughout his entire life. He left the office of Prime Minister nearly 40 years ago, yet he has been an active voice in the Australian public debate ever since. He was, as the member for Watson and the member for Sydney recalled, very active in the Republican Movement, in the campaign for Australia to have one of its own as its head of state. I remember recruiting Malcolm Fraser and Gough Whitlam to come onto the same platform and speak in favour of the yes vote in the referendum. I thought I would share with honourable members my recollection from my account of that time. I rang Gough on 8 July 1999 and I noted:

I spoke to Gough Whitlam today, or rather he spoke to me, for about 40 minutes. He is happy to speak for a yes vote and with Malcolm Fraser. Gough said, 'Malcolm, I'm tired of these professors, no, associate professors of Constitutional law theorising about constitutional crises. I know about constitutional crises.'

Interestingly one of the features of the republican model in that referendum campaign, as some members may recall, was that, while the President would be appointed by a joint sitting of both houses of parliament in a bipartisan vote, the President could be removed by the Prime Minister, but the President could not be replaced by the Prime Minister. The senior state Governor would fill that place and then there would have to be a bipartisan appointment of a new President. Both Whitlam and Fraser were of the view that, if that arrangement had been in place in 1975, Kerr would not have sacked Whitlam because both of them were of the view—Malcolm Fraser especially and perhaps with more insight—that the reason Kerr had sacked Whitlam was to pre-empt Whitlam sacking him—an interesting footnote to that history.

Gough was remarkably generous to everyone he dealt with. As the Prime Minister said, he was a very hard man to disagree with and an almost impossible man to dislike. He was full of arcane knowledge; the Prime Minister referred to his knowledge of ecclesiastical matters, and he had an extraordinary interest in genealogy—almost anybody's genealogy. If he learned one thing about your family—a third cousin or an aunt or a great-aunt—he would remember it and then remind you of it. He was very, very well informed about this. I saw this in action in 1986, when I called him as a witness in the Spycatcher trial to give evidence on behalf of my client, Peter Wright. I was hoping that Gough would be indignant about the evidence we had produced that the British security service, MI5, had been—without any legal authority at all—bugging all sorts of people in Britain, including Patricia Hewitt, who had been the secretary of the National Council for Civil Liberties and was at that time Neil Kinnock's private secretary. She went on, of course, to become a cabinet minister and so forth. I tendered some evidence about this, and Gough immediately lit on Patricia Hewitt's name. He said, 'I know this one—Mr Kinnock's private secretary. I've known her all her life. I went to school with her mother. I've known her mother since I went to school with her in 1930. I've known her father since they were married in 1941. I've known her and her sisters and her brother her whole life.' He went on, and so I said, 'Do you regard her as a person likely to be plotting the violent overthrow of the British government?' Gough said, 'No. I've never felt myself at risk in her company.'

There has been a lot of discussion about Gough's regard for the great beyond. Gough is resolving his relationship with God as we speak, no doubt, but he was always very entertaining about those issues of the divine. I remember 25 years ago, when I was in business with his son Nicholas. Nicholas and Judy brought Gough and Margaret up to visit us at the farm in the Hunter Valley that I had inherited from my father some years before. Unfortunately, a fog had descended on this particular part of the country and you could not see anything. It was just white everywhere you looked; it was like being in a white cloud. I said to Gough, 'I'm really sorry. It's a nice view here but you can't see any of it.' He said, 'Oh, don't be concerned. I'm at completely at home. It's just like Olympus.'

We recognise that all prime ministers capture the attention of the Australian people. Not all prime ministers capture their imagination, and even fewer capture their imagination and retain it for so long. Gough Whitlam was able to do that because of his presence and his eloquence but, above all, because of that generosity of vision I spoke about earlier. He was an enhancer, an enlarger. He was not a mean or negative politician in the way, for example, that another great Labor leader, who also lived to a similar age, Jack Lang, was. Jack Lang was a great hater. Gough Whitlam is a great example to us. He obviously never forgave John Kerr, but look at the way he was able to be reconciled with Malcolm Fraser. That is a great example to all of us. We can learn from Gough Whitlam about the importance of optimism and the importance of having a big vision for our country. I might add that it is important to execute that vision with competence; but, nonetheless, think about the way he did not allow hatred to eat away at him. The reality is that hatred, as we know, destroys and corrodes the hater much more than it hurts the hated, and so many people in our business, in politics, find themselves consumed by hatred and retire into a bitter anecdotage, gnawing away at all of the injustices and betrayals they have suffered through their life. Whitlam was able to rise above that, as we saw in his cooperation and work with Malcolm Fraser on many causes—not just the republic. I recall at one point I was on the opposite side when they were busily campaigning to stop a group I was part of to acquire Fairfax. They had many unity tickets on different matters. Nonetheless, it is a great example for all of us not to be consumed by hatred.

Gough will never be forgotten. He will be given credit, I imagine, for many things that were equally or perhaps even entirely the achievements of others. I heard earlier that Gough Whitlam had ended the White Australia policy. I could just hear Harold Holt turning in his watery grave to hear that! Nonetheless, he was there at a tipping point, a fulcrum point, in our history, and he was able to embody and personify a time of change. By capturing our imagination with such optimism, he will always be a symbol of the greatness, the importance, the value of public life—an example to all of us. We can leave the political agenda to one side, we can leave the debate about his measures to one side and just remember that big, generous, witty, warm man—that giant—and, above all, we must remember that nearly 70 years of marriage, that extraordinary love affair. If Gough is in Olympus, I have no doubt that he is there with Margaret. I think that, in some respects, one of the things we can be happiest about today is the fact that that old couple are no longer apart.

For Rocky Johnson: 'I'll see you down the road, soul man.', by Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson - 2020

21 January 2020, Los Angeles, California

I... God... man, I wish had... I wish I had one more shot. Yeah, I wish I had one more shot. Just to... say goodbye. Say I love you. Say thank you, respect you. But I have a feeling he's watching. He's listening. I know my dad would be saying, "Kay Fabe the tears."

Thank you guys. Thank you. Thank everyone for coming, and being so generous with your time, and being so caring, and kind with your condolences to me and my family. We thank you. Thank you to everyone who came up here and really gave beautiful tributes to my dad, to our dad.

You try and you think about, "Well, what am I going to write?" And this is, you don't know what to write for a eulogy, it's your dad. You don't expect it. As you guys know, he went very quick. I was on my way to work the other day on January 15th, and I was just pulling into work, and we were shooting that day, and it was the very first day of production. And then I get a call from my wife, Lauren, who said, "Hey, I just spoke to Cora, seems like something's going on with your dad." And Lauren was with our... she was with our babies, she was with my mom. And she said, "I really can't talk." She goes, "I think you should call Cora though." So of course I called Cora. Cora, she broke the news to me, and right when she broke the news, I just literally, just pulling in, I'm looking at, the whole crew, hundreds of guys and women milling around, and carrying equipment and waving at me in the truck, and waving back. And it all got really foggy. And it seemed like it was just a big dream.

You know how you have those moments and you try and shake yourself out of it. You're like, "No, it's not a dream. My dad's gone." And in that moment I just thought, "Well, what do I need to do? What's the next thing that I need to do?" And I heard a voice say, "Well, hey, the show must go on." And that was my dad. That was my old man who told me that.

Rocky Johnson, the tremendous athlete. Man, just in fantastic condition.

You know, the wrestling community is a very tight community. It's a global business, but it's a very, very tight community. And they believe in, "The show must go one." This idea about, "The show must go on", it just reminded me of what my dad was, and what he represented to our business, and to our wrestling business, and something that we're all very proud of, because many of us are in this wrestling business, and it is in your blood, and once it's in your blood, it never goes away.

The phrase of trailblazer is connected to my dad's name. It means when you do things that have never been done. Our uncles, who were so proud of Afa and Sika, you guys are trailblazers. Never been done. From the isle of Samoa, the Wild Samoans. Your grandfather Peter Maivia, trailblazer. Never been done. Hulk Hogan, trailblazer. Never been done.

My dad, Rocky Johnson, trailblazer, never been done. When you do things that have never been done, but impactful things, and things that actually move the needle in an industry, and he did that, this man did that. The other side to it that I wanted to point out, that I thought it was important to say is that when somebody's a trailblazer, that means that they've actually... they have the ability to change behaviour, an audience's behaviour, people's behaviour. And for my dad, when he broke into the business in the mid-60s, and throughout the late 60s, and into the 70s, in the United States where racial tension and divide was very strong, and in the 60s in the 70s, you have a black man coming in. It's an all white audience.

Now all these small little towns that eventually I would go on to wrestle in, but at that time, he changed the audience behaviour, and actually had them cheer for this black man.

And not when he was wrestling against other black men, because he was usually the only black guy in the territory. He was wrestling against other white wrestlers, and I thought that was really unique, and I thought that was really powerful, and I thought that it deserved to be said, and that's what this man did. We celebrated, and we gave honour to Dr. Martin Luther King yesterday, and I woke up this morning, and my heart of course is heavy, but there was a lightness to it that I thought, "Wow, it's very appropriate, because my dad fought for racial equality at a time where it was needed."

Dr. Martin Luther King would be very proud of my dad. When you think of my dad's name, you think hard work, you think barrier breaking. You think being the hardest worker in the room, always working out, taught me how to workout at a very young age. Hard work, discipline. Those are things, and tenants that are synonymous with my dad's name.

What's amazing to me now, after a day like today, after we come here and we give our respects and our love, he's galvanised. He's responsible for galvanising families now, and families coming together just a bit closer. Because through processes like this, and we all go through this, we all go through this. We've all lost loved ones, but guaranteed, when we walk out of these doors, we're going to hold each other a bit tighter. We're going to hug each other a bit harder, we're going to kiss each other. We're going to say, "I love you", and we're going to be a little bit more present. And I think that's the beautiful irony about my dad, and all the things that his name is synonymous with, all over the years.

Now, his name is synonymous with the power of love, and bringing people together. It's very appropriate for the soul man, I wish your soul at rest and at ease. There's no more pain. No more regret. I'm sorry, just give me a second. Thank you for bearing with me. Just give me a second. I'm so happy he had friends, a place like this that he could come to, and all of you who have been in his life, and all of you who have said really wonderful things. All the messages that you've sent me. He would be very happy at this. It would make his heart full. This isn't goodbye, this is just, I'll see you down the road. We'll see down the road. I thank you guys so much for your time, and your love. I love you all. I thank you. We love you all, my family. Thank you guys very much. And I'll see you down the road, soul man.

For Jon Hanna: 'I found in Jon a fellow warrior', by Janet Ní Shuilleabháin - 2019

17 March 2019, Ireland

Hi Everyone

I have the unenviable task of delivering Jon’s eulogy. Joanna asked me, and it is an absolute honour. And a challenge.

How can I distill down into words who Jon was, and what he was, to so many people. And given Jon’s love of language, linguistics and etymology, it’s daunting to try to use my words to talk about him.

But Jon knew that words were about communication, and that that was more important than anything else. He also wasn’t a language snob. So I thought I’d start with a turn of phrase that Jon often used when someone would tell him something that was upsetting. But Jon would use the phrase after some silence - because he also knew the power of silence. Calming silence, companionable silence. To pause and think and feel.

And then he would say; well, fuck!

I am gonna do the very Irish thing and talk about… who are your people and where are they from? Jon was one of four children, and they are here today. Sean, Sarah and Emma. And Jon’s hometown was Kilkeel in Co Down, where he learned to be careful which side of the road he walked on, how he talked, how to talk to different people, and how to sleep through pipe bombs. That’s real!
Jon grew up in a time before the Good Friday agreement, he grew up during the Troubles. He saw communities torn apart, and knew what it was to live with injustice. Jon’s mother was a wonderful woman who had her own struggles. But she encouraged Jon always to read, and much like myself and many others, books were our form of escapism; kept us alive, kept us together.

And then, as his god mother put it - he ran away from home when he was 17, and got himself into college. Jon attended UCD; he was the outspoken and ‘out’, bisexual auditor of the Gay and Lesbian society (which I can gladly say has changed its name to be more inclusive). Jon also went on to be social welfare officer of UCD Students Union. There he worked on building communities of people who were like himself. People who needed to be stood up for, needed to be fought for, needed to be minded.

It was there he met Celine, the wonderful person who shared his sense of social justice, his spirituality, and with whom he had four wonderful children. Sadhbh, Jason, Ciel and Fiach.

By the way, Jon is one of those annoyingly successful people who never graduated and got their degree. Formal education was too slow, too annoying, and not interesting enough for Jon. But such was his skill, at what we called Hackcraft, being an ethical hacker and coder. That skill has been recognised, and he has received industry accolades from many groups, including Microsoft, for his contributions.

There are many people here today who said they first met Jon, or only met Jon, through the internet. It was through the internet and through words and text that I first met Jon. We spent a lot of time in similar online communities; be it the An Fáinne pagan mailing list, or Boards.ie. We were mods of the Pagan forum, and when people said a Sex & Sexuality forum wasn’t possible, Jon and I argued that it was. So we got landed with that too.

When I was due to meet Jon in person finally, on the way to a moot, he had posted ‘how to recognise Jon’ like a computer program. Is the Jon you see bald? No? Not Jon! Is the person you see bald and has glasses? No? Move on! Is the person bald, with glasses and wearing a long trench coat? If not, move on. Go to next person! That’s where we met in person, and we could communicate as much at ease face to face as we did in text.

If you are someone who is here today because Jon crossed your path online, at a protest or anywhere, and something about him resonated with you, and you feel his loss: I am glad you are here today. It was through the friendships that grew up around us in Boards.ie that Jon met Joanna.

I had the absolute honour of being the best man at their wedding. Their sons Oisín and Ruadhán are here with us today. Jon and Joanna’s love reach out beyond themselves. Their home was a welcoming place to so many. It always made me smile, to see the small loving interactions between the two of them. I am going to miss that. Even if it was them being in separate rooms rolling their eyes at each other, at the same time, which I have seen!

Jon was someone who I could talk to about all aspects of my life. We were in all of the not respectable, small, alt communities. Which meant our conversations could be wide ranging, and cover anything and everything. I found in Jon a fellow warrior. He would often say, there are wartime people, and peacetime people. We discussed at length what it is to be a warrior in society when there are no spears to be chucked.

What fighting modern battles looked like, what putting yourself and your body in harm’s way for the sake of others looked like. And so much of his part in the run up to the referendum was doing just that, with the Radical Queers Resist.

But being a warrior isn’t just about fighting. It’s about upholding and embodying the ideals of the community you defend. Which Jon did by being an outspoken, at times belligerent, pagan and a witch. And a bisexual. And if someone had an issue with that, Jon made it clear it was their issue. “This is who I am, deal with it!” And by doing that, he made other people feel like they could stand a little taller, they could be a little more who they are.

We have now gotten to the section of this eulogy where I need to give a content notice. Because speaking honestly about what Jon struggled with, was what he did. And what I am going to do. But we can do this in a way that is not cruel or unkind. So if anyone needs to step out, or find someone to hold a hand, or put in earphones please take a moment to do so now. Because self care - when we live in a society that insists you should not be you, and does not value you - is a radical act of resistance.

For as long as I have known Jon Hanna he suffered from, and struggled with, depression. Jon was also a rape survivor, and struggled with disordered eating. There were times when I would see him and he was getting too thin and we would be concerned, and we would try feed him up. The cost of his happiness and being who he was, loudly, was the impact that it had on his sense of self value.

When you are a warrior who fights, it is your deeds and what you do that have value. And when you are not ‘doing’ or serving your community, it can easily feel that you have little worth. I know this because I suffer from it too, and it was something that Jon and I would talk about.

So quiet times are hard for people like me and Jon. When there is a war on, there are things that need doing. When things are quiet, and you need to spend time doing self care and healing and resting - it is very hard to do.

It might sound silly, and I know that there might be people who might not get it, but that can be the biggest struggle. And that can often go unseen.

So I look around the room today, to see so many people in so many communities that Jon reached out and effected, especially Bi+ Ireland where Jon was a coordinator. These are supportive communities that Jon and I would have dearly loved and needed, when we were coming out ourselves.

Jon’s pro-choice activism goes right the way back to the X case referendum in 1992 and his work within Student Union activism… when it was still so taboo to be pro-choice in Ireland, he and I were stridently so. It was an absolute delight and joy for him to see the pro-choice movement in Ireland grow, when groups like Parents for Choice were formed. We could have conversations with more people than just us!

Jon also got involved with Mara Kleins Clark's wonderful organisation, the Abortion Support Network. For Jon was one who believed that unjust laws should be broken.

Jon’s coding work brought him international connections and the regard of his peers, and his passion and interest in witchcraft did the same. There are witches all over the globe who enjoyed his wit, wisdom and discussions. These are his brothers and sisters in the craft, including those here today who are facilitating his funeral rites.

He knew the reach of his words and his deeds, but he was very humble about it.

“No one is finally dead until the ripples they cause in the world die away. Until the clock he wound up winds down, until the wine she made has finish its ferment, until the crop they planted is harvested. The span of someone’s life… is only the core of their actual existence.” Terry Pratchett, Reaper Man.

The crop that Jon Hanna sowed in being uncompromisingly and unapologetically himself, is the effects you see in each other. Every time someone stands a bit straighter, feels they can put on a badge, or hug each other in support. That is the effect that Jon has had.

We’re all here today, from so many communities, brought together because of Jon. I will ask that you all look after each other and yourself, and if you can, carry forward and do the work that still needs to be done. And I am gonna end with another Terry Pratchett quote, and I ask that maybe you join me, and raise your fist in solidarity.

“A man is not dead while his name is still spoken.”

If you'd like to donate to the Abortion Support Network you can do so here.

For Sidney Lehmann: 'As much as anything else, I am angry that we were robbed of his third act', by Chris Lehmann - 2012

12 November 2012

Today was my father’s funeral. Over 600 people showed up to mourn my father’s passing and to celebrate his life. It was an incredible difficult, sad and yet powerful day. What follows is my eulogy, which a few folks asked me to post. It borrows, not surprisingly, from my post from the other day, but not completely. I have to say, it was probably the hardest speech I have ever had to give.]

I am not sure how I’m supposed to follow Elizabeth’s speech… I think she gave us all our call to arms… but I’m going to try anyway.

Thank you all for being here today. To see so many people who loved Dad and want to be here to say goodbye to him is just incredible.

In a moment of true, wonderful irony, though, Dad’s funeral is, of course, happening during an Eagles game. I’d like to think that if there is an afterlife, Dad is somehow flipping the afterlife remote control between being here with all of us and the game. And of course, he would be doing so for two reasons… first, let’s be clear, he’d want to know the score of the game, but second, Dad would be profoundly uncomfortable with all of us saying really wonderful things about him. So, as we say goodbye to my father and say all the things we love so much about him, I just want you to imagine that high laugh of his – and picture him changing the channel to the Eagles game, because he could have never sat through this.

And that’s as good a place to start as any – because my father was a great man who did not accept his own greatness. Even as he was fighting against cancer with more strength and courage and honesty than I can imagine, he complained about his procrastination. My father… who was expending such energy and will and strength to fight for more time… still talked about the things he didn’t do. He never quite accepted his own greatness, all he had done, all the lives he profoundly changed. I wish he could have been here today if only to see the incredible good he did in the world.

That’s not to say he wasn’t proud – he was. He wasn’t vain at all. He was the most down-to-earth person you could know. But he was proud in all the right ways. When I was in high school, I had to do a paper on a US Supreme Court case, and my father took some friends of mine and I to the Trenton Law Library, so we could do research. Dad stayed with us, and about a half an hour into the day, he called me over to one of the stacks. He had some of the books off of the shelves so he could show me where he had argued cases in front of the New Jersey Supreme Court. He told me about the cases, and there was such pride – justifiable, earned pride – that he could show his son those accomplishments.

That was one of those moments with my father that I cherish, because it was this window that let me know that as important as it was for me that he was proud of who I was, he wanted me to be proud of who he was as well. Needless to say, I was always incredibly proud to be Sid Lehmann’s son.

How could I not be?  My father was, simply put, my hero. He spent his life in service of working people. He could have used his considerable, powerful intellect chasing down wealth and power, and I have no doubt that he could have acquired both, but instead he chose to serve. My dad is one of the smartest people I’ve ever known, and he chose a life of service. And more than that, he had a fundamental and powerful respect for the people he served.

Because my father’s intellect was really only matched by his humility. It didn’t matter how smart he was, he respected the gifts and the intellect and the lives of the working people he served – and really of all the people he met. One of the many lessons I learned from him was that you should never use your own intellect to make others feel less smart than you, but as smart or smarter than you, and if you respected the ideas and perspectives of others, you could and would learn from anyone and everyone. My dad believed that whatever gifts one was given, they had to be spent lifting others up, not putting them down.

Dad believed also that kindness could be created writ large in the work you did in the world. You felt it from him, and his work as a labor lawyer came from a few deeply held beliefs. One was the idea that the purpose of life was that you should try to leave the world a little bit better off because you happened to live in it, and the other was that every person had a right to dignity and a fair shake at life.

He learned that idea first from his own mother –  it came from her belief that you should never intentionally try to hurt another person. He had a fundamental and abiding respect for all people –  or most anyway. He couldn’t believe or understand or forgive those who occupied a place of privilege–whether by birth or through their own success–and did not use their position to better the lives of others. It simply made no sense to him.

I remember when I was in college at U. Penn – and probably a little more (a lot more) full of myself than I should have been. I was questioning a lot of my beliefs about unions and working people and what people “deserved.”  At the time, the New York Daily News was on strike, and it was looking like the paper was going to go under. My dad and I got into a heated argument about it. I’d call it a discussion, but in my family, we argue. I was arguing that it made no sense for the unions not to give in and I said something about the paper not really “belonging” to them anyway. My dad replied by saying, “You know, maybe the union would be better off if they were run by a bunch of [expletive] Wharton MBAs, but that doesn’t mean that working people don’t have a right to a say in their own lives, and you should remember that of land, labor and capital, only one of the three is sentient.”

That was over twenty years ago, and I’ve used that argument ever since. No one has ever made a better one.

And so it was from my father that I learned that kindness has to be tempered by true steel in your spine – a lesson that has proven invaluable to me as a teacher and principal. But my father’s steel –  my father’s courage –  was incredible. Last year, after most people with a terminal cancer diagnosis would’ve long retired, my dad was still fighting. I remember him telling me about taking on Gov. Christie’s state appointed monitor in a case where my dad represented the custodians for the Trenton Public Schools. Gov. Christie’s unelected appointee wanted to privatize the custodial jobs, and my father would not let him. He rallied the Trenton Board of Ed to side with the union, imploring them not to lay off the parents of the very children they served, and in a letter to the state he wrote, “the state monitor should learn that urban communities and school districts exist for reasons other than transferring public monies to private corporations.” He did this while he was dying of cancer. We should all wish for one-tenth of the courage and the steel and the resolve that my father had.

That resolve that belief in standing up for what is right was not just in his public life but in his private life as well. That was who he was, that is what he passed on to me and to my sister who probably understood that lesson better than I did. There was no delineation between the morality of my father’s public life and morality of his private life. He was who he was in all aspects of his life, deeply committed to justice, deeply committed to fairness, deeply committed to kindness.

And he was so much more than political. He also loved the life of the mind, and there was nothing more fun than great passionate debate. I remember coming home from college shortly after having gone to a pro-choice rally in Washington, DC. Dad and I were driving somewhere and my Dad – who was deeply pro-choice – was arguing an anti-feminist, anti-choice line of reasoning, and I finally got so angry that I said, “You don’t even believe your own argument right now!” And he replied, “Yeah, but I just really love to debate with you.” And after I finished banging my head on the dashboard of the car, I realized even then what an incredible compliment that was. That love of the give and take of a debate — that willingness to learn from others while you were debating, even if it meant you didn’t “win,” I learned that from him. It was from my dad I learned how you can argue to learn, not just argue to win.

The list goes on and on… my dad was my baseball and soccer coach when I was a kid. He embraced Ultimate Frisbee when I fell in love with the sport, even learning to throw a forehand, just so we could have a catch. He was my moral compass. And as my life and my career has become what it has become, he was my best advisor and strategist. In one of the great joys of my life, over the past decade, I was able to be a strategist and sounding board for him as well. And he has been the most amazing grandfather to Jakob and Theo and my niece Amelia. He is one of the truly greatest men I have ever known – and likely ever will.

It’s funny, I say all of the time, “I am the son of a union lawyer and a teacher. I am the most derivative human being ever, none of my ideas my own.” Dad tried to argue that point with me–perhaps not surprisingly–but it really is true. My best ideas are merely an outgrowth–a logical extension–of all he and my mother taught me.

I haven’t quite come to terms with the fact that I will never have another conversation with my father again. I am sure I share that with many of you. And as much as anything else, I am angry that we were robbed of his third act. He and I talked about the things he knew he wasn’t going to have time for. There were still windmills to tilt at. There were still battles to fight. And in an era where it is so important to make sure that all people have a right to a say in their own lives – a right to self-determination and self-worth, we have lost one of our great champions in that fight.

So, Elizabeth has already given you her list – and it is an excellent one – but let me add one more thing. Let us all – to quote my Dad –  try to make the world a better place because we happened to have lived in it. The world is a better place because Sid Lehmann lived in it for sixty-seven years. It is because of the way he lived both his private and public lives. Now it is our turn. We have to ask ourselves – “What would Sid do?” And granted, the answer would usually involve profanity, but then there would be action. We should all work just a little harder to make the world a better place because we happened to have lived in it. To do that is to honor his life and honor his memory. And it has the added benefit of being the right thing to do, too.

Thank you, Dad, for being the most incredible father I could have ever wanted. Thank you for making me want to make the world a better place and for, along with Mom, showing me a path to do so. Thank you for making sure that I have known I was loved every day of my life.

I love you, Dad, and I’ll miss you more than I can say.

Thank you.

This eulogy originally appeared on Chris blog Practical Theory, A View from the Schoolhouse. Chris is the co-author of the book Building School 2.0. How to Create the Schools We Need.

For Connie Johnson: 'Cancer really does take the f*cking good ones', by Carrie Bickmore - 2017

22 September 2017, St Paul’s Cathedral, Melbourne, Australia

Cancer really does take the f*cking good ones. And breathe . . .

I first met Connie about four years ago, when Connie and Sam launched Love Your Sister and Sam had this crazy idea to unicycle around the country. I joined him for a ride on the Perth leg of his journey and surprise him with Connie who flew over at the time. I didn't know either of them really before that and what I discovered during that ride was a brother and sister bond like no other and a drive just like mine to rid the world of cancer.

I don't think Sam realised at the time that that ride was as beneficial for me as it was for you, I know what your mission was, but for me it was a chance to chat to someone who watched someone they loved dearly in a huge amount of pain, and that chat will stay with me for a long time. It felt like a private chat even though it was broadcast to the nation.

I continued to follow your journey over the years and watched as the village grows and your fundraising efforts soar. What you and Connie are achieving together is phenomenal and I say achieving together in the present tense because even though Connie has passed away her mission to rid this world of cancer is only just beginning. With Sam, and Emma, and your whole family all the team of villagers continuing Connie's legacy, Love Your Sister will continue to achieve incredible things and I don't think it's going to stop until no one dies from cancer again.

I have been reflecting a lot in the past few weeks about Connie and her journey and how Connie chose to fight her cancer battle publicly, not privately. She could have fought it privately, she had every right to fight it privately, but instead she let us all in on her journey and she taught us so much. She taught us to cherish being a mum, to make time to be silly with the kids and have fun. And I've certainly, in the last few weeks, had Connie at the forefront of my mind. Every time I played with my kids, I played a bit longer each time, think how lucky we are as mums to be able to play with our kids.

She's taught us what it's truly like to be a cancer patient, what it's really like. But most of all she's taught us how to be a bloody good human being. Cancer as we've spoken about tonight affects you not just physically but mentally, and also impacts every single person connected to the cancer patient, which makes being so open with the world incredibly hard and incredibly hard for those around you and your family as well. But that's why Connie touched so many hearts because we got to see the real journey, the highs, the lows, the small wins, the setbacks, the days where it seems impossible and it's ripping your family apart and then the days where everyone is unified and ready to battle. There are not many people that have the ability to rally a nation the way Connie has, all of you here know how personally she has touched your life, it will be different for every single one of us, but the size of her village shows just how wide her heart is and how long her arms are. No matter what type of cancer has affected your family we're all in this together — this country will continue Connie's mission.

To Mark and to the kids, we're also thinking of you and we know once the services stop and the casseroles stop being delivered and life goes back to normal, for most of us, it doesn't go back to normal for you, and I hope that you can transition into your new normal peacefully and privately knowing that we are all thinking of you.

The world is a smaller place without her big heart in it, but thank God we got the chance to know Connie Johnson, I will always be thankful for that.

Connie died on 8 September 2017. Donate now, or get your Connie Cottonsocks at https://loveyoursister.ecwid.com. Join The Village over at http://www.facebook.com/loveyoursister

For Kobe Bryant: 'Love your teammates, love your family, and outwork everyone else in the gym', by Jimmy Fallon - 2020

27 January 2020, Los Angeles, California, USA

The world was heartbroken yesterday by a helicopter accident in Los Angeles that claimed the lives of nine people, including that of Kobe Bryant and his 13-year-old daughter, Gianna. Kobe was such a life force, so strong and creative and inspired, that in my head I thought that he was going to live forever. I met Kobe when he was 17 and I was 21. He was a rookie on the Lakers, and I was just starting out in the comedy scene in LA. We were at a party, and we didn't know anyone at the party, so we just started talking and I said like, "Hey, what do you do?" He goes, "I play basketball." I go, "Where?" And he goes, "For the Lakers." I go, "Wow." He goes, "What do you do?" I go, "I'm a stand up comic." We just got along and we hit it off, started talking.

He was telling me he was into poetry, and I met his sister, she was there. And so then the guy that was having the party said, "Hey guys, who wants to make a beer run?" And Kobe wasn't drinking, he was 17. So he goes, "I'll do it." He goes, "Jimmy, you want to come?" So I go, "Okay." So I get in the car, it's me and Kobe Bryant, and he's brand new in LA. And me too, I didn't know LA at all. And we drive down Sunset Boulevard to this place called Pink Dot. It looked like a 7-Eleven. I thought it was a 7-Eleven. You pulled in and... But it wasn't a 7-Eleven.

Anyway, so I go in and I open the door and it's locked and the guy goes, "Sorry, I can't sell you anything." And I go, "We just want to get some beer right there." And he goes, "Yeah, I can't do that." And I go, "But just real quick, we know what it is. It's just there." And he goes, "Yeah, that's not how the way this place works. We're delivery only, we're not allowed to sell things." And I go, "Okay." And then the Kobe takes out his ID and he puts it up against the glass and he goes, "I'm a Laker."

And the guy opened the door, and we walked out with five cases of beer and we saved the party. So we saved the party. We say goodnight. And, of course, Kobe went on to become a legend. Five NBA titles, two Olympic gold medals, 18 All-Star appearances, one of the most brilliant and most respected players in NBA history. And when we'd run into each other over the years, we'd laugh about that night that we first met.

We'd laugh at all the good things that had happened since, and we'd laugh about how much fun it was to raise kids, and all the stupid mistakes we made trying to figure out how to be good dads. And Kobe had four daughters, and I have two daughters. And today he and one of his girls are gone. But I think I knew Kobe enough to know that he rose to any challenge by digging deeper and getting back to work.

So let's honour Kobe, Gianna, and the other lives that were lost yesterday by following his example. Love your family, love your teammates, and outwork everyone else in the gym. To Vanessa and all those affected by this tragedy, we love you and we'll always be there for all of you.

Kobe, when we meet again, we're going on a beer run.

Tony analysis of this speech in Speakola substack

For Natasha Jones: ‘Such a beauty, such zest for life’, by Riley Jones - 2019

4 December 2019, Memo Music Hall, Melbourne, Australia

Some of you might think of me as a funny bugger, and may have even seen speak at Natasha’s Dad’s funeral back in 2015, where I managed to sneak in some Slovenian swear words and get some laughs. I’m not sure I can manage that today, though.

I’ve actually been dreading this for a long time. Basically, since the day that Natasha received her terribly cruel diagnosis, and if not that exact day then definitely that first week, I’ve lain awake at night, time and time again, wondering about what I might say at her funeral should she pass away. And now here we are, a little over 15 months later.

My thoughts ran the gamut from just angry ranting, to hysterical crying, to just focussing on the positives, to everything in between. I think today we’ll get a mix of all of those.

I should start by saying that we shouldn’t be here. She was only 43.

And apologies in advance to anyone who has survived cancer or who is even just over the age of 43, because I keep thinking: why do you get to live and she didn’t? And that includes me, I’m the sweet age of 46. Here’s an actual example of this thought process from yesterday: why is Moby alive? Nothing against him, by why him and not Natasha? I know Tash wouldn’t want me to feel like that, but she was much nicer and better than I. It’s just not fair. She should still be alive.

But her cancer was horrible, more horrible than I think we realised. In retrospect, I can now see that this was almost a certainty to happen, but we tried to keep hope alive, to try to ensure that she could be with us for as long as possible. And as it turned out, that was nowhere near as long as we expected. None of us, not her, I don’t think even her medical team, expected her to go last Tuesday. Only two days beforehand, on the Sunday, she’d told me that she wasn’t going to die this year.

But it looks like it WAS her time to go, and as I’ve noted in a pretty distressing post on the Tash Tribe on Facebook, she went relatively peacefully, probably unaware of my desperate attempts to revive her. And many people have reassured me that, if she had to choose a way to go, as opposed to the timing, it was almost perfect. She was in her bed, having just had her first shower in days, warm under a blanket in her dressing gown with the love of her life looking over her, caring for her. Her last words were in response to Declan saying “I love you”, and she whispered back “I love you, too”.

And then a few minutes later, she was gone, and all of a sudden, it was just me and the kids left. I must say that, if I didn’t have the kids, I don’t know what I’d do, because there’s a big Natasha-shaped hole in my life, that can never be filled. I’m so lost. I keep wanting to tell her stuff, or watch a TV show with her, and then remember that I can’t. I still can’t believe she’s gone and I bawl my eyes out every day. And it’s only been a week. How can I do this for the rest of my life?

A life that used to be pretty great – only a year and a half ago – and which is now just miserable.
But, there is some light, because Natasha gave me you three beautiful creatures. And even with that, it seems like she was planning ahead and looking after me – which is very Tash. Y’all may not know this, but Xander has been comforting me, quickly coming over and giving me a hug whenever he sees me tearing up, and Elektra and Declan have been wonderful as well. But it’s my job to look after you guys, and that’s what I’ll do. I just worry I’m not going to be as good at it as she was, or anything else she did for that matter. But there are a lot of people in this room who have offered to help me, too.

SO, apart from my kids, I struggle to find any positives in this, but here goes.

The main positive is – she’s no longer in pain. Ever since the chemotherapy started, she required pain medication, and the pain only got worse towards the end. She was willing to endure it to be with her family as long as possible, but now, thankfully, she’s no longer suffering.

Another weird positive is that, once she was diagnosed, I had to step up and do all of the things she used to do, which was an astounding amount. And taking the kids to their dermatologist one day led to discovering that I had a small skin cancer in my scalp – it was benign, but could have got a lot worse. If Tash hadn’t been diagnosed, I wouldn’t have gone to that appointment, and I wouldn’t have had that skin cancer cut out, and then who knows.

Also, thanks to her diagnosis and treatment, I got to spend pretty much every minute of every day for the last 15 months with her, and a lot of time with the kids, too. Much more intense time than we would have had otherwise. And I must thank my work colleagues for being so flexible with us and giving me that opportunity – I don’t know what I’d do without you guys.

And that brings me to another positive, not of her death, but her life - we all got to be with her at some point during her 43 years on this planet. And I think we can all agree that makes us very lucky, because she was amazing.

I guess that makes me even luckier than most, as I was with this incredible woman for 23 years – half of my life, and more than half of hers.

For those of you who don’t know the story, Natasha and I got together 23 years ago in around November 1996. We had passed each other on the stairs in the Union Building at Monash Uni, our eyes had met, and we knew straight away there was a connection. We later chatted at a Union Night, trying to work out if we’d met before, but there was nothing we could pin down, so it just must have been destiny.

And then Natasha introduced me to her friend, Jade, and Jade told us that she had actually had to pull us apart at the Chocolate Ball at the Palace, here in St Kilda, many months before. So it was either destiny, or a drunken pash that neither of us remembered, but it turned out that we had fortuitously each found our respective soul-mate.

She was my wife, lover, travel companion, fellow music aficionado, partner in all things and, most of all, my best friend. We did pretty much everything together and I can confidently say that pretty much every good thing I’ve ever done and every good memory I have – she was there.

I loved everything about her – the obvious stuff that you all loved – her kindness, her smile, her thoughtfulness and generosity. But I also loved weird stuff – I loved her taste and her smell. She used to complain sometimes that she hadn’t had a shower and thus would smell, and I honestly told her numerous times that she had never smelt, never had an unpleasant odour, EVER. I meant that very seriously. It’s a pity the feeling was not mutual… (Let’s just say that she didn’t think my natural, aluminium-free deodorant from Byron Bay was very effective.)

Another thing I loved: her voice. Not just her singing voice which some of you may have heard – she sang like an angel. But her regular voice – I told her that I loved listening to voicemail messages she left, because hearing her voice just gave me a little thrill.

And I loved her feet. Not in a fetish-y way. But her nerves were a bit damaged from the chemo, and something she really appreciated was her feet being rubbed. So I would volunteer every night to massage her feet, and she looked surprised every time, and then happily thrust her feet at me, nearly kicking me in the face, and I would massage her feet and calves for an hour while watching one of our many TV shows that we mutually loved. Because we didn’t have as much alone time together, it was something I looked forward to.

Also, she was super-hot, but we all know that.

Another thing we all know is that Natasha was the nicest person you could ever meet, and so thoughtful. Even when going through the worst things personally, she would think of others.

As a very weird example, she kept suggesting women I could be with after she died, who would be good for me and the kids, and maybe even put up with my comic book movies. Some of her suggestions are in this very room! But I had to beg her to stop thinking like that, and pimping me out to her friends – I was married to her, and I didn’t want that to end, or to even have to think about it. But she was still just trying to look after me.

In that respect, the timing of her passing also seems like she planned it. In particular, she completed her magnus opus – the renovation of our house. She had been driving that for almost two years – getting permits and dealing with heritage issues and so forth, so when she was first diagnosed she asked me, if she died, would I complete the renovation. And I said “no”, because I’m an idiot. But she just went “Right!”, and decided to get it done. And for most of the last year, while she was dealing with everything else, we’ve been living in our partially renovated home. But it was finally completed so that we were able to move back in in late in October. And she loved it, and got to enjoy it for her last month, referring to it as her legacy, while snidely remarking that my next wife had better appreciate it.

She also stuck around just long enough to teach me most of what she knew about running the house and raising our three beautiful kids.

The first day that I drove the kids to a school thing after last Tuesday, Xander said to me “Dad – it’s lucky we’re all so used to you doing this for us”.

So that’s small comfort, but more importantly, the kids also got to have the best Mum ever. She devoted herself utterly to them. She fought tooth and nail to get them into their school, to help them with any health or other issues, to encourage them and drive them to whatever activities they were interested in. She was so proud of you all, even though she might ask you to play outside, or clean up your pig-sty room, you were still her pride and joy. OUR pride and joy. You three are truly greater than the sum of your parts – you’re like Mum, you’re like me, and ultimately you’ll be better than both of us.

There are so many other things I’d like to talk about, if I could go all day. Her love of books and the fact that we were hoping to one day to open a book bar for her to run. Her love of photography – she was so talented. Her love of travel, of course – she’d famously been to 56 countries. Her connection to Slovenia and Australia’s Slovenia: Tasmania. I hope she would appreciate that her coffin is hand-crafted Tasmanian Blackwood. Her dog, Indy, who gave her so much joy. And, of course, her many, many friends. She has SO many friends, and many of them have written very touching tributes to her online and on Facebook. A common thread with all of them is that Natasha made everyone she spoke to, everyone she dealt with, feel special. Because she thought you were special.

So when it came to organising today, I honestly found it too hard to pick even a few friends to speak – it would just always leave someone out, some group out, which is why I basically just went with Myshell to talk about Natasha pre-Riley, and me to try to cover everything post-Riley. But know that she loved you all, individually, and cherished the time she spent with each and every one of you.

Everything about this has been hard, so I want to just quickly thank some people who have helped me and our family through this. (I then went into some personal thank-yous...)

And that brings me to possibly the hardest thing about this service: choosing photos for the upcoming Tribute. How could I fit her life into 80 photos? She’s in so many AND looks great in all them. In the end, I just had to pick a selection from the ones already on my computer, so I know it’s not representative of her whole life. There are numerous trips around the world that are completely missed. But fortunately the booklets you’ve received today include some of those photos plus many others.

Also, I deliberately chose not to have any photos from the last month and a half, when she really started deteriorating.

These photos remind us of Tash in her prime. Such a beauty, such zest for life. A shining star.
I also want to explain the two songs accompanying this Photo Tribute. They’re both by Biffy Clyro, a band Natasha and I saw many times and which we even managed to take the kids to, back in 2014. The first song is called Folding Stars, and it was written by the lead singer when his mother, Eleanor, lost her battle with cancer. It’s very on point and will likely make you cry. The second song is Mountains. This song is a bit more uplifting, but also has a special connection to me and Tash. She bought this picture here for my birthday a few years ago, with some of the beautiful lyrics from Mountains on it. “Nothing lasts forever, except you and me. You are my mountain, you are my sea. Love can last forever, between you and me. You are my mountain, you are my sea.”

For John Spencer - 'He had the spirit of the boxer, you see', by Richard Schiff - 2005

Richard Schiff eulogy for John Spencer - West Wing Weekly podcast

The West Wing Weekly

December 2005, Los Angeles, California

This eulogy was initially read by Bradley Whitford at John Spencer’s memorial service as Richard Schiff could not be present. Schiff recorded it for the West Wing Weekly podcast

To John from Richard. I am a great actor. You can laugh if you want. For seven years, John Spencer has been trying to convince me to get me to say it out loud. I am a great actor. To honor John, I have said it. For those of you who know me, you know how ridiculously impossible that is for me to say. Never mind that I still think I suck. That's not the point. John Spencer came at you with love like Joe Frazier came at Muhammad Ali with fists.

Think about it. John Spencer would come at you, short and powerful, forehead first with fiery eyes and loading that left hook with compliments and adoration and admiration, respect and absolute and pure love. And throw them at you with ferocity and determination and grit. He would not let up no matter how you ducked, bobbed, weaved, and sidestepped. Sure enough, he'd catch you with that left hook and buckle your knees.

He had the spirit of the boxer, you see. He was a fighter. He fought his demons that way and day in and day out, he was triumphant over them, batting them down as they popped up like so many Jacks in the boxes, trying to divert his focus, his drive, his well to be the best human being he could be.

His great weapon was acting. He loved acting like no one I've ever met. He loved the makeup, the robe, the slippers, the trailers, the prizes, the gossip. He ate it and dreamt it, drank it, devoured it like steak. To do it right, he kept those demons nearby, allowing them to live through his acting and so always walking that dangerous, courageous line. The line only great actors and artists must tread on.

John Spencer was a great actor.

I was doing a scene in the Oval Office on The West Wing, a tough scene. John was doing the Warren Leight play at the Taper and had to leave the set every day by 5:00 PM to make a show. He was shot out first. All day long, I was doing this very hard scene and all day it was going well, alive in the moments. When I was being shot, I expected it to go just as well. But John had left for the play, and when I looked over to his chair where he had been sitting all day, the scene suddenly stopped. Someone had replaced John in his chair, and the scene stopped. You see? And I realized that all day in my glances over to John, I had received this great gift. One look from Leo and I had been filled with substance, with purpose, with clarity. And now with John gone, I was empty, and the scene stopped. The play was over, and I had to start again by myself, and I hated it. I told him that the next day. I thanked him for his great gift to us, his generosity, his presence. John was always there for us off camera, giving constantly and totally and forever giving.

I am not present at the memorial because I am doing a one man show in New Jersey of all places. When I told everyone of this choice to do this play, I was greeted with such remarks as, "Are you out of your mind? Why on earth are you doing that?" But John responded with, "Oh, that's great. It's going to be so great for you. What's the play? You're going to kill them." And so on and on. Each and every day, as I wait terrified in the wings to embark on this wild expedition on stage, I talk to John. And I thank him for his faith in me.

I think if John were back here as fearful and shaking as I am, he would smack down those demons and put the proverbial mouth guard between his clenching teeth and tear out on that stage and conquer all.

I thank him every night. I thank him for all that he has given us and will keep giving us. At his funeral in New Jersey, I watched his friends and family and the other Catholics present reach over and touch his casket to say goodbye. And so I did as well, and then felt a rush, an electric surge coming through my hand from his casket. I was reaching out and touching him to say goodbye. I had missed the chance in Los Angeles. Some believe that the soul stays around for a couple of days before it embarks on the next journey, wherever that is. Well John had stuck around I think to say goodbye to us.

Wouldn't it be just like him, one last act of generosity to let us say goodbye, to stick around for a little, just a bit more conversation and companionship to chat about the things in this world one more time. What's the greatest thing you can say about someone? That without them you would not be who you are. John Spencer has changed my life knowing him, and I will always love him for it. With severely buckled knees lying flat on my back on the canvas, in fact, I say this for you, John. I am a great actor.

One day, maybe one day, if I keep talking to you, keep listening to you, I'll be just maybe as great as you.

For Ron Wootton: 'For me, as the lights in the auditorium fade and the overture starts, he will be there in the wings', by Ian Mason

A tribute presented at St Mark’s Church, on behalf of Camberwell Grammar School:

In the early 1960s, when the Camberwell Grammar School Council decided to engage the services of an efficiency expert, a Time and Motion guru, to determine whether full use was being made of the school day, they made one fundamental mistake: they organised it so that Ron Wootton was one of the first to be interviewed.

At this stage of the year, it was not unusual for Ron to be painting the play set at midnight or even later, having already taught a full class-room programme during the day, and then taken a 1st XV111 football practice after school. Having spent some time with Ron, our visiting expert came to the conclusion that schools were different. He was right, of course, and the thing that makes them different is people like Ron Wootton. For him, a seventy- or eighty-hour school week was not unusual; as he put it, it was part of the job; it was what one did, if one taught at a private school.

At this stage the School was growing and, for many of those new to the school, myself included, it was Ron’s tireless contribution to the all-round life of the school that was to have such a profound influence.

Ron joined the staff at CGS in 1957, as an art teacher, having already had some contact with the School through Harrie Rice, whom he had helped the previous year with sets for that year’s play, in those days a very humble affair, performed in a green Nissen hut, that doubled as an Assembly Hall. In many ways, the whole school at that time was a very humble affair: its numbers, though improving, were still low, and its sporting teams often suffered humiliating defeats at the hands of their opponents. The Headmaster, the Rev Tom Timpson, asked Ron to take on the role of Sportsmaster, a position he was to fill with distinction for 34 years, during which he coached almost every major sport.

He took the 1st XV111 for over twenty years, and, although he never achieved his dream of beating Assumption, he earned the respect of opponents like Brother Domnus and Ray Carroll, as an astute coach, who could extract the best from his players.  

While he was a dedicated Australian Rules player and supporter, he also saw the need to broaden opportunities for boys to participate in team sports and was a prime mover in the introduction of soccer to the AGS. For a number of years, he coached the 1st Soccer X1, and the perpetual trophy for the inter-school six-a-side soccer competition is fittingly named after its inaugurator.

He took the school swimming team, for many years without the luxury of a venue at school, training wherever he could find an empty pool. On one memorable occasion, he strode into the Richmond Pool during Caulfield Grammar’s House Sports. Competitors, staff, parents and pool attendants were stunned, when he walked in, stopped the programme, commandeered a lane, and trialled a new boy who had arrived at CGS that morning. The Combined Sports were only a day away. It was 1961, the boy made the team, and CGS won the title by one point.

He revolutionised the School’s approach to Athletics. Realising one coach could not look after the whole team, he allocated the staff to individual events. If you pleaded ignorance of the particular field, Ron gave you a book on the subject, and arranged expert coaching from his extraordinarily wide circle of friends. It was part of Ron’s whimiscal nature and eye for the absurd, that saw him place a diminutive John Hantken in charge of the discus, and then organise as his assistant, a vast Argentinian discus thrower, who had carried her nation’s flag at the 1956 Olympics. There was no way you could turn him down; his energy and enthusiasm were infectious.

He introduced a great variety of new sports to the school, and saw them become part of the AGS sports programme. Water Polo became popular within the school, and, although it must have seemed a far cry from his days as coach of Australia’s Olympic team, he used his profound knowledge of the game to establish Camberwell Grammar as one of the top Water Polo schools in the State.

He was a great believer in the value of camps and trips in the education process. He was the first to take a Senior School camp at Bambara, and many of you here today will remember boats on the Hawkesbury, the Murray, the Gippsland Lakes; Art camps at Somers; overseas trips to Europe and Asia. As OC of the School Cadet Unit, he dispensed with much of the formal military training and drill to focus on developing the individual through bivouacs and outdoor activities. He founded the Duke of Edinburgh Scheme within the school, raising money so that no boy would be denied the opportunity to participate.

With Roy McDonald, Ron set up the Photographic Society; he established a students’ newspaper, which, unlike its short-lived predecessors, still operates today; he ran the School Printing Club; he was never too busy to help with the lay-out of school publications; his cover designs for play programmes were outstanding. No task was too much trouble, and he was at the beck and call of everyone, and, usually at such excruciatingly short notice, that a lesser man would have been tempted to refuse - the Parents’ Association, the Ladies Auxiliary, any department of the school that wanted a notice, needed a sign or some kind of art work for a function turned to Ron, and he always seemed to find the time to meet the demands made of him.

Ron was a superb artist, and this was recognised by the School Council when they named the new Art Studios in his honour. His guidance and inspired efforts in the class-room touched the lives of many Camberwell Grammarians. At the first Old Boys’ Art Show held last year, many of the more successful exhibitors were past students of his, and his own painting of Roystead was one of the first to be sold. Ron’s artistic abilities were nowhere better demonstrated than in his creative set designs. So good where they, that, one evening in the mid ’sixties, the Headmaster received a phone call from a nearby resident, complaining that there was a naked woman posing on the grand piano in the Memorial Hall. It was one of Ron’s paintings, part of the set for an Old Boys’ play. He designed, built and painted the sets for over 100 plays, and most recently, had been talking about how he could assist in this year’s school production of My Fair Lady.

To remember Ron Wootton is to remember a man whose presence could turn the most dreary occasion into something lively and entertaining. His talent for creating fun was extraordinary. Many of us have had the ‘pleasure’, albeit dubiously, of being part of his love of practical joking. At an Art Camp at Somers, Ron had organised John Frith, the former Herald cartoonist, to visit the camp. Ron thought it would be a good idea if we pretended that John was a hypnotist, and, at the concert on the last night, the staff, Ron included, would seemingly succumb to John Frith’s hypnotic skills. All went well, until Ron, who had arranged to be last in line, declared that he was not an appropriate subject and could not be hypnotised, but would be John’s assistant. I remember Harrie Rice muttering into my ear that we were in trouble. Four staff sitting on chairs, pretending to be hypnotised in front of an audience of boys, with Ron Wootton on the loose, was enough to make the bravest of men apprehensive, and, as it proved, rightly so too.

But above all, Ron was a schoolmaster; not a school teacher, for that term seems to imply something of the nine-to-three mentality. Ron was a real schoolmaster, and remains today as much a part of Camberwell Grammar as any building, any patch of ground. The School has a fine new Performing Arts Complex, a splendid Music School, and one of the best science buildings in the State. However, a school is more than bricks and mortar: its real worth lies in its less tangible assets. Notable among these is a man whose memory will live on in the hearts and minds of the hundreds of boys who passed through his hands, their lives forever influenced by a man with a great love of his art, his sport, his school. I do not use the phrase ‘his school’ lightly, for in the Camberwell Grammar School of today there is so much that is, and will continue to be, Ron Wootton.

I am not here today to say farewell for this is not really ‘good-bye’. Ron will be there every time I walk up the Roystead steps at five o’clock into the Common Room; he will be on the boundary line whenever the 1st XV111 runs out on to the Gordon Barnard Oval; he will be at every Old Boys’ Dinner in the memories and anecdotes of the generations he taught, and, , watching the curtain rise on another School play.

To you, Jenny, Kim, Lisa, and Andrea, and to you, John and your family, the whole School community offers its deepest sympathy. We share in your sorrow, for, with Ron’s death, we have all lost part of ourselves. He was, indeed,

                   ‘A man so various that he seem’d to be

                    Not one, but all mankind’s epitome.’

For Chris Wilson, 'Chris was one of the best songwriters of his generation', Blues Music Hall of Fame, by Kerri Simpson - 2019

30 October 2019, Blues Music Hall of Fame, Memo Music Hall, St Kilda, Melbourne, Australia

There is no available video of this speech

Let’s raise our glasses to Chris Wilson.

It is hard to encapsulate everything that Chris did and was to the blues community in one speech. I think it would be safe to say that all the nominees, and all of us in the blues community, everyone wanted Chris to win. He truly deserves to be the first musician inducted into the Blues Music Victoria Hall of Fame. Of all of us musicians, Chris deserves this award because he played more and promoted blues music more in this country than any of us.

Chris Wilson was a giant of a man and he lived and breathed the blues. His commitment was always 100 percent; over the years, he played thousands of gigs. I’ve seen him exhausted, sick and worn out, laying on a couch backstage absolutely knackered, and then he would jump up on stage to blow everybody away, prowling, stomping blowing his head off.

Like any working musician, he played and loved a diverse range of styles and wrote a significant body of original work. However, everything he played was always informed by the blues. Chris was a highly insightful and intelligent man; he read about and listened incessantly to all kinds of blues. He was a deeply spiritual man. He had an extraordinarily astute understanding of the human condition, which showed in his lyrics and in the way he delivered every note. He understood the importance of placement, of one note or one word, one bend or twist, or a multitude of notes and words and bends. Regardless of the genre he was playing, every note was underpinned by his massive command and inherent understanding of the blues.

Chris was one of the best songwriters of his generation; he could write songs that made you laugh and cry, he was astute, observant, he understood people, his songs touched you. We will never forget iconic Australian songs like “Shoot out at the 7/11”, a blues at its heart.

Always thinking of others, Chris constantly sought out new bands and players; he had an excellent ear for new talent. He was a massive supporter of other musicians, male and female, and he employed female musicians and roadies long before that was an accepted thing in this industry. It wasn’t important whether someone was well known or just starting out, Chris would chat, discuss and pass on his formidable knowledge to anyone who had a genuine interest. He would sit and play with beginners or experienced musos; he didn’t care, he just loved playing and never gave “fame” even a thought.

In fact, he hated the whole fame and celebrity thing. I will never forget one night at a club; I was stony broke, having just come back from New Orleans. I’d walked from St Kilda to Richmond to see Chris, Vika and a few other mates play. The club owner had told Chris that he didn't want to give me a gig or let me sit in because I wasn't famous enough. Chris did not appreciate that at all. That was not how Chris did things. Later that night, Bob Dylan’s band came in and sat with Chris’ band. I was side of stage, drinking Chris’s rider because I was too broke to buy a drink. Chris grabbed me one handed by the collar of my coat and suddenly I was hoisted onto stage. He plonked me down and said, “If anyone belongs on this stage, Simpson, it’s you … fucking sing ! ” He pushed me towards his vocal mic and sing I did. That was the mark of the man. I was certainly not the only person he would do that kind of thing for, I was definitely not the only broke or struggling musician he helped out.

One of the reasons Chris loved blues so much was because it’s music for the common man. The blues is the people’s music. Something everyone could feel, whether they were educated in music or not. Blues has a primal power that connects with people. Chris had that same power, both on-stage and off. Those of you here tonight who were fortunate enough to have seen Chris Wilson perform know that when he hit his straps the whole room went with him.

I have seen and heard thousands of musicians in my time. I have seen musicians from all around the world, but no one anywhere could equal Chris Wilson in his stride. His voice and harp playing resonated deeply inside each and every one of us, he took you to another part of the planet. This was a man who made you feel; feel good, feel hopeful, happy or connected. He made you reflect but, no matter what, he always made you feel. As a musician playing alongside of him the experience as Shannon Bourne said was transcendental.

The extent to which Chris had affected people throughout his career was witnessed by the music community’s reaction and support when he became ill. Chris loved community, he passionately loved music and always worked towards bringing people together and helping people out. Teaching primary school kids, secondary school kids, helping out oldies, looking out for mates, helping out addicts, teaching harp. He played more benefits than most of us have had hot dinners.

Over the years, I know so many people found Chris’s music helped them when they had been suffering or having a hard time. Chris’s music made them feel again. When he was ill, I had so many people asking me to pass messages on to him, and that message was always the same: Chris had changed their life. He had often more than changed their life; his music had helped people who were suicidal, going through divorces or deaths. The stories always followed a similar pattern; they were going through a major tough time, but went to a gig, and that was the turning point in their recovery. Chris Wilson’s music touched and changed people’s lives that is why he deserves this award.

The reality was that Chris never helped people for his own gain and he never sought attention. However, there was many a time when he would quietly slip me a fifty-dollar note and say, “Simo, see that person over there … give them this and tell them to get a guitar lesson with it.”

We had a mutual mate who was down on their luck. As always, Chris slipped me a fifty and said, “Simo, can you get them some groceries?”. When I was down on my luck, having come back from the US, having had all my money stolen, and been ripped off, he simply said to me, “Simo, consider it payment for an education in life”. And then he slipped me some money.

Just when his career was taking off nationally and internationally, Chris’s beloved mum, Betty, became ill with cancer. Chris dropped his music without a second thought, he dropped everything to look after his mum.

It was acts like these to many hundreds of people over the years that touched so many people, that made such an impact. The deep respect and genuine love for Chris was evident in the way the entire country showed their support for him when he became ill.
It is shown tonight by this award. Chris’s induction as a Blues Legend into the Hall of Fame.

It was a blessing that Chris was able to understand before he died just how much of an impact he had made on other people’s lives. At the core, he was a humble man, and if he could only have been here with us tonight, he would have been all uncomfortable and saying the rest of us nominees deserved to win more than him.

All of us who were lucky enough to know Chris know that he would have been cracking endless jokes tonight about being inducted. He was a highly intelligent man and we will never forget his wickedly informed sense of humour. He would throw in lines and jokes at gigs that seemed so effortless, and he would have hundreds of people laughing.

He was fearless onstage and off, and he hated the bullshit side of the industry. One night, Pat Cash came in to that same club I was talking about earlier. Cash was pissed and asked Chris if he could get up and sing. Without skipping a beat, Chris told him to fuck off over the mic. “I don't come down to the tennis centre and ask if I can hit a ball around with you … Don't come in here and ask to sit in!”

Of course, no one manages to make a career like that without support, and Chris had his family. His beautiful mum, Betty, used to do all his bookings and management and we all knew, she was a darling. You used to have to call up Betty to book Chris. Later on he had the support of the love of his life, the incredible Sarah Carroll and their two sons, Fenn and George, and his legacy lives on through each of them. Chris was so proud of them, and would have been delighted that all three of them have albums coming out in the next few months.

If Chris were here, he would have been truly humbled and honoured to be inducted into the Hall of Fame. It would have meant so much more to him than the other awards he had won because this night and Blues Music Victoria has been set up by people who genuinely love and care about blues music and musicians. Like Chris did.

Thank you to those who nominated him and thank you to everyone who voted for Chris.

And to echo back almost the same words he once said to me “If anyone deserves to be a Blues Legend in this Blues Music Victoria Hall of Fame, it’s fucking you, Wilson !”