for Clarence Clemons: 'Clarence doesn’t leave the E Street Band when he dies. He leaves when we die', by Bruce Springsteen

21 June 2011, Palm Beach, Florida, USA

I’ve been sitting here listening to everyone talk about Clarence and staring at that photo of the two of us right there.  It’s a picture of Scooter and The Big Man, people who we were sometimes.  As you can see in this particular photo, Clarence is admiring his muscles and I’m pretending to be nonchalant while leaning upon him.  I leaned on Clarence a lot; I made a career out of it in some ways.

Those of us who shared Clarence’s life, shared with him his love and his confusion.   Though "C" mellowed with age, he was always a wild and unpredictable ride.  Today I see his sons Nicky, Chuck, Christopher and Jarod sitting here and I see in them the reflection of a lot of C’s qualities. I see his light, his darkness, his sweetness, his roughness, his gentleness, his anger, his brilliance, his handsomeness, and his goodness.  But, as you boys know your pop was a not a day at the beach.  "C" lived a life where he did what he wanted to do and he let the chips, human and otherwise, fall where they may. Like a lot of us your pop was capable of great magic and also of making quite an amazing mess.  This was just the nature of your daddy and my beautiful friend.  Clarence’s unconditional love, which was very real, came with a lot of conditions.  Your pop was a major project and always a work in progress.   "C" never approached anything linearly, life never proceeded in a straight line. He never wentA… B…. C…. D.  It was always A… J…. C…. Z… Q… I….!  That was the way Clarence lived and made his way through the world.  I know that can lead to a lot of confusion and hurt, but your father also carried a lot of love with him, and I know he loved each of you very very dearly.  

It took a village to take care of Clarence Clemons.  Tina, I’m so glad you’re here.  Thank you for taking care of my friend, for loving him.  Victoria, you’ve been a loving, kind and caring wife to Clarence and you made a huge difference in his life at a time when the going was not always easy. To all of "C’s" vast support network, names too numerous to mention, you know who you are and we thank you. Your rewards await you at the pearly gates.  My pal was a tough act but he brought things into your life that were unique and when he turned on that love light, it illuminated your world.  I was lucky enough to stand in that light for almost 40 years, near Clarence’s heart, in the Temple of Soul.

So a little bit of history: from the early days when Clarence and I traveled together, we’d pull up to the evenings lodgings and within minutes "C" would transform his room into a world of his own.  Out came the colored scarves to be draped over the lamps, the scented candles, the incense, the patchouli oil, the herbs, the music, the day would be banished, entertainment would come and go, and Clarence the Shaman would reign and work his magic night, after night.  Clarence’s ability to enjoy Clarence was incredible.  By 69, he’d had a good run, because he’d already lived about 10 lives, 690 years in the life of an average man.  Every night, in every place, the magic came flying out of C’s suitcase.  As soon as success allowed, his dressing room would take on the same trappings as his hotel room until a visit there was like a trip to a sovereign nation that had just struck huge oil reserves.  "C" always knew how to live.  Long before Prince was out of his diapers, an air of raunchy mysticism ruled in the Big Man’s world.  I’d wander in from my dressing room, which contained several fine couches and some athletic lockers, and wonder what I was doing wrong! Somewhere along the way all of this was christened the Temple of Soul; and "C" presided smilingly over its secrets, and its pleasures.  Being allowed admittance to the Temple’s wonders was a lovely thing.  

As a young child my son Sam became enchanted with the Big Man… no surprise.  To a child Clarence was a towering fairy tale figure, out of some very exotic storybook.  He was a dreadlocked giant, with great hands and a deep mellifluous voice sugared with kindness and regard.  And… to Sammy, who was just a little white boy, he was deeply and mysteriously black.  In Sammy’s eyes, "C" must have appeared as all of the African continent, shot through with American cool, rolled into one welcoming and loving figure.  So… Sammy decided to pass on my work shirts and became fascinated by Clarence’s suits and his royal robes.  He declined a seat in dad’s van and opted for "C’s" stretch limousine, sitting by his side on the slow cruise to the show.  He decided dinner in front of the hometown locker just wouldn’t do, and he’d saunter up the hall and disappear into the Temple of Soul. 

 Of course, also enchanted was Sam’s dad, from the first time I saw my pal striding out of the shadows of a half empty bar in Asbury Park, a path opening up before him; here comes my brother, here comes my sax man, my inspiration, my partner, my lifelong friend.  Standing next to Clarence was like standing next to the baddest ass on the planet.  You were proud, you were strong, you were excited and laughing with what might happen, with what together, you might be able to do.  You felt like no matter what the day or the night brought, nothing was going to touch you.   Clarence could be fragile but he also emanated power and safety,  and in some funny way we became each other’s protectors; I think perhaps I protected "C" from a world where it still wasn’t so easy to be big and black.  Racism was ever present and over the years together, we saw it.  Clarence’s celebrity and size did not make him immune.  I think perhaps "C" protected me from a world where it wasn’t always so easy to be an insecure, weird and skinny white boy either.  But, standing together we were badass, on any given night, on our turf, some of the baddest asses on the planet.  We were united, we were strong, we were righteous, we were unmovable, we were funny, we were corny as hell and as serious as death itself.  And we were coming to your town to shake you and to wake you up. Together, we told an older, richer story about the possibilities of friendship that transcended those I’d written in my songs and in my music.  Clarence carried it in his heart.  It was a story where the Scooter and the Big Man not only busted the city in half, but we kicked ass and remade the city, shaping it into the kind of place where our friendship would not be such an anomaly. And that… that’s what I’m gonna miss.  The chance to renew that vow and double down on that story on a nightly basis, because that is something, that is the thing that we did together… the two of us.  Clarence was big, and he made me feel, and think, and love, and dream big. How big was the Big Man?  Too fucking big to die.  And that’s just the facts.  You can put it on his grave stone, you can tattoo it over your heart. Accept it… it’s the New World. 

Clarence doesn’t leave the E Street Band when he dies.  He leaves when we die.  

So, I’ll miss my friend, his sax, the force of nature his sound was, his glory, his foolishness, his accomplishments, his face, his hands, his humor, his skin, his noise, his confusion, his power, his peace.  But his love and his story, the story that he gave me, that he whispered in my ear, that he allowed me to tell… and that he gave to you… is gonna carry on.  I’m no mystic, but the undertow, the mystery and power of Clarence and my friendship leads me to believe we must have stood together in other, older times, along other rivers, in other cities, in other fields, doing our modest version of god’s work… work that’s still unfinished.  So I won’t say goodbye to my brother, I’ll simply say, see you in the next life, further on up the road, where we will once again pick up that work, and get it done.  

Big Man, thank you for your kindness, your strength, your dedication, your work, your story.  Thanks for the miracle… and for letting a little white boy slip through the side door of the Temple of Soul.  

SO LADIES AND GENTLEMAN… ALWAYS LAST, BUT NEVER LEAST.  LET’S HEAR IT FOR THE MASTER OF DISASTER, the BIG KAHUNA, the MAN WITH A PHD IN SAXUAL HEALING, the DUKE OF PADUCAH, the KING OF THE WORLD, LOOK OUT OBAMA! THE NEXT BLACK PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES EVEN THOUGH HE’S DEAD… YOU WISH YOU COULD BE LIKE HIM BUT YOU CAN’T!   LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, THE BIGGEST MAN YOU’VE EVER SEEN!... GIVE ME A C-L-A-R-E-N-C-E.  WHAT’S THAT SPELL? CLARENCE! WHAT’S THAT SPELL? CLARENCE! WHAT’S THAT SPELL? CLARENCE! … amen.

I’m gonna leave you today with a quote from the Big Man himself, which he shared on the plane ride home from Buffalo, the last show of the last tour.  As we celebrated in the front cabin congratulating one another and telling tales of the many epic shows, rocking nights and good times we’d shared, "C" sat quietly, taking it all in, then he raised his glass, smiled and said to all gathered, "This could be the start of something big."

Love you, "C".

for Father Mychal Judge: 'He was a New Yorker through and through', by Father Michael Duffy - 2001

Father Mychal Judge was chaplin to the New York fire department, and the first certified casualty of the 9-11 attacks .He was dubbed 'The Saint of 9-11'. There is no video or audio of the eulogy.

15 September 2001, St Francis of Assisi Church, New York City, USA

After all that has been written about Father Mychal Judge in the newspapers, after all that has been spoken about him on television, the compliments, the accolades, the great tribute that was given to him last night at the Wake Service, I stand in front of you and honestly feel that the homilist at Mother Teresa’s funeral had it easier than I do.

We Franciscans have very many traditions. You, who know us, know that some are odd, some are good. I don’t know what category this one fills.

One of our traditions is that we’re all given a sheet of paper. The title on the top says, “On the Occasion of Your Death.” Notice, it doesn’t say, in case you die. We all know that it’s not a matter of if, it’s a matter of when. But on that sheet of paper lists categories that each one of us is to fill out, where we want our funeral celebrated, what readings we’d like, what music we’d like, where we’d like to be buried.

Mychal Judge filled out, next to the word homilist, my name, Mike Duffy. I didn’t know this until Wednesday morning. I was shaken and shocked … for one thing, as you know from this gathering, Mychal Judge knew thousands of people. He seemed to know everybody in the world. And if he didn’t then, they know him now, I’m sure. Certainly he had friends that were more intellectual than I, certainly more holy than I, people more well known. And so I sat with that thought, why me … and I came down to the conclusion that I was simply and solely his friend … and I’m honored to be called that.

I always tell my volunteers in Philadelphia that through life, you’re lucky if you have four or five people whom you can truly call a friend. And you can share any thought you have, enjoy their company, be parted and separated, come back together again and pick up right where you left off. They’ll forgive your faults and affirm your virtues. Mychal Judge was one of those people for me. And I believe and hope I was for him.

We as a nation have been through a terrible four days and it doesn’t look like it’s ending. Pope John Paul called Tuesday a dark day in the history of humanity. He said it was a terrible affront to human dignity. In our collective emotions, in our collective consciousness, all went through the same thing on Tuesday morning.

I was driving a van in Philadelphia picking up food for our soup kitchen, when I began to hear the news, one after another after another. You all share that with me. We all felt the same. It was at 2 o’clock in the afternoon that I came back to the soup kitchen, feeling very heavy with the day’s events. At 4:30, I received a call from Father Ron Pecci. We were serving the meal to the homeless. And he said, “It’s happened.” I said, “What?” And he said, “Mychal Judge is dead.”

At that moment, my already strained emotions did spiritually what the World Trade towers had done physically just hours before. And I felt my whole spirit crumble to the ground and turn into a pile of rubble at the bottom of my heart. I sat down on the stairs to the cellar, with the phone still to my ear and we cried for 15 minutes.

Later, in my room, a very holy friar whom I have the privilege to live with gently slipped a piece of paper in front of me and whispered, “This was written thousands of years ago in the midst of a national tragedy. It’s a quote from the Book of Lamentations. “The favors of the Lord are not exhausted. His mercies are not spent. Every morning, they are renewed. Great is his faithfulness. I will always trust in him.”

I read that quote and I pondered and listened. I thought of other passages in the Gospel that said evil will not triumph, that in the darkest hour when Jesus lay dying on the cross, that suffering led to the resurrection.

I read and thought that the light is better than darkness, hope better than despair. And in thinking of my faith and the faith of Mychal Judge and all he taught me and from scripture, I began to lift up my head and once again see the stars.

And so today I have the courage to stand in front of you and celebrate Mychal’s life. For it is his life that speaks, not his death. It is his courage that he showed on Tuesday that speaks, not my fear. And it is his hope and belief in the goodness of all people that speaks, not my despair. And so I am here to talk about my friend.

Because so much has been written about him, I’m sure you know his history. He was a New Yorker through and through. As you know, he was born in Brooklyn. Some of you may not know this, but he was a twin –– Dympna is his sister. He was born May 11th, she was born May 13th. Even in birth, Mychal had to have a story. He just did nothing normally, no.

He grew up in Brooklyn playing stickball and riding his bike like all the little kids then. Then he put some shoe polish and rags in a bag, rode his bicycle over here, and in front of the Flatiron building shined shoes for extra money. But very early on in his life, when he was a teenager –– and this is a little unusual –– because of the faith that his mother and his sisters passed on to him, because of his love for God and Jesus, he thought he would like to be a Franciscan for the rest of his life. And so, as a teenager, he joined the friars. And he never left. He never left because his spirit was truly, purely Franciscan, simple, joyful, life loving and laughter. He was ordained in 1961 and spent many years as a parish priest in New Jersey, East Rutherford, Rochelle Park, West Milford. Spent some time at Siena College, one year I believe in Boston.

And then he came back to his beloved New York. I came to know him ten years after he was ordained. This is ironic: My 30th anniversary of ordination was Tuesday, September 11th . This always was a happy day for me, and I think from now, it’s going to be mixed.

My first assignment was wonderful: I was sent to East Rutherford, New Jersey, and Mychal was there doing parochial work. In the seminary, we learned a lot of theory, but you really have to get out with people to know how to deal and how to really minister. So, I arrived there with my eyes wide open, my ears wide open. And my model turned out to be Mychal Judge. He was, without knowing it, my mentor and I was his pupil. I watched how he dealt with people. He really was a people person. While the rest of us were running around organizing altar boys and choirs and liturgies and decorations, he was in his office listening. His heart was open. His ears were open and especially he listened to people with problems.

He carried around with him an appointment book. He had appointments to see people four and five weeks in advance. He would come to the rec room at night at 11:30, having just finished his last appointment, because when he related to a person, they felt like he was their best friend. When he was talking with you, you were the only person on the face of the earth. And he loved people and that showed and that makes all the difference. You can serve people but unless you love them, it’s not really ministry. In fact, a description that St. Bonaventure wrote of St. Francis once, I think is very apt for Michael: St. Bonaventure said that St. Francis had a bent for compassion. Certainly Mychal Judge did.

The other thing about Mychal Judge is he loved to be where the action was. If he heard a fire engine or a police car, any news, he’d be off. He loved to be where there was a crisis, so he could insert God in what was going on. That was his way of doing things.

I remember once I came back to the friary and the secretary told me, “There’s a hostage situation in Carlstadt and Mychal Judge is up there.” I got in the car and drove there: A man on the second floor with a gun pointed to his wife’s head and the baby in her arms. He threatened to kill her. There were several people around, lights, policemen and a fire truck. And where was Mychal Judge? Up on the ladder in his habit, on the top of the ladder, talking to the man through the window of the second floor. I nearly died because in one hand he had his habit out like this, because he didn’t want to trip.

So, he was hanging on the ladder with one hand. He wasn’t very dexterous, anyway. His head was bobbing like, “Well, you know, John, maybe we can work this out. This really isn’t the way to do it. Why don’t you come downstairs, and we’ll have a cup of coffee and talk this thing over?”

I thought, “He’s going to fall off the ladder. There’s going to be gunplay.” Not one ounce of fear did he show. He was telling him, “You know, you’re a good man, John. You don’t need to do this.” I don’t know what happened, but he put the gun down and the wife and the baby’s lives were saved. Of course, there were cameras there. Wherever there was a photographer within a mile, you could be sure the lens was pointed at Mychal Judge. In fact, we used to accuse him of paying The Bergen Record’s reporter to follow him around.

Another aspect, a lesson that I learned from him, his way of life, is his simplicity. He lived simply. He didn’t have many clothes. They were always pressed, of course, and clean, but he didn’t have much. No clutter in his very simple room.

He would say to me once in a while, “Michael Duffy” –– he always called me by my full name –– “Michael Duffy, you know what I need?” And I would get excited because it was hard to buy him a present.

I said, “No, what?”

“You know what I really need?”

“No, what Mike?”

“Absolutely nothing. I don’t need a thing in the world. I am the happiest man on the face of the earth.” And then he would go on for ten minutes, telling me how blessed he felt. “I have beautiful sisters. I have nieces and nephews. I have my health. I’m a Franciscan priest. I love my work. I love my ministry.” And he would go on, and always conclude by looking up to heaven and saying, “Why am I so blessed? I don’t deserve it. Why am I so blessed?” But that’s how he felt all his life.

Another characteristic of Mychal Judge, he loved to bless people, and I mean physically. Even if they didn’t ask. A little old lady would come up to him and he’d talk to them, you know, as if they were the only person on the face of the earth. Then, he’d say, “Let me give you a blessing.” He put his big thick Irish hands and pressed her head till I think the poor woman would be crushed, and he’d look up to heaven and he’d ask God to bless her, give her health and give her peace and so forth. A young couple would come up to him and say, “We just found out we’re going to have a baby.” “Oh, that’s wonderful! That’s great!” He’d put his hand on the woman’s stomach, and call to God to bless the unborn child. When I used to take teenagers on bus trips, he’d jump in the bus, lead the teenagers in prayer, and then bless them all for a safe and a happy time. If a husband and wife were in crisis, he would go up to them, take both their hands at the same time, and put them right next to his and whisper a blessing that the crisis would be over.

He loved to bring Christ to people. He was the bridge between people and God and he loved to do that. And many times over the past few days, several people have come up and said, Father Mychal did my wedding, Father Mychal baptized my child. Father Mychal came to us when we were in crisis. There are so many things that Father Mychal Judge did for people. I think there’s not one registry in a rectory in this diocese that doesn’t have his name in it for something, a baptism, a marriage or whatever.

But what you may not know, it really was a two-way street. You people think he did so much for you. But you didn’t see it from our side, we that lived with him. He would come home and be energized and nourished and thrilled and be full of life because of you.

He would come back and say to me, for instance, “I met this young man today. He’s such a good person. He has more faith in his little finger than I do in my own body. Oh, he’s such good people. Oh, they’re so great.” Or, “I baptized a baby today.” And just to see the new life, he’d be enthused. I want just to let you know, and I think he’d want me to let you know, how much you did for him. You made his life happy. You made him the kind of person that he was for all of us.

It reminds me of that very well known Picasso sketch of two hands holding a bouquet of flowers. You know the one I mean –– there’s a small bouquet, it’s colorful and a hand coming from the left side and a hand coming from the right side. Both are holding the bouquet. The artist was clever enough to draw the hands in the exact same angle. You don’t know who’s receiving and who is giving. And it was the same way with Mychal. You should know how much you gave to him, and it was that love that he had for people, and that way of relating to him, that led him back to New York City and to become part of the fire department.

He loved his fire department and all the men in it. He’d call me late at night and tell me all the experiences that he had with them, how wonderful they were, how good they were. It was never so obvious that he loved a group of people so much as his New York firefighters. And that’s the way he was when he died.

On Tuesday, one of our friars, Brian Carroll, was walking down Sixth Avenue and actually saw the airplane go overhead at a low altitude. And then a little further, he saw smoke coming from one of the trade towers. He ran into the friary. He ran into Mychal Judge’s room and he says, “Mychal, I think they’re going to need you. I think the World Trade tower is on fire.” Mychal was in his habit. So, he jumped up, took off his habit, got his uniform on, and I have to say this, in case you really think he’s perfect, he did take time to comb and spray his hair.

But just for a second, I’m sure. He ran down the stairs and he got in his car and with some firemen, he went to the World Trade towers. While he was down there, one of the first people he met was the mayor, Mayor Giuliani. Later, the mayor recounted how he put his hand on Mychal’s shoulder and said, “Mychal, please pray for us.” And Mychal turned and with that big Irish smile said, “I always do.”

And then kept on running with the firefighters into the building. While he was ministering to dying firemen, administering the Sacrament of the Sick and Last Rites, Mychal Judge died. The firemen scooped him up to get him out of the rubble and carried him out of the building and wouldn’t you know it? There was a photographer there. That picture appeared in The New York Times, The New York Daily News and USA Today on Wednesday, and someone told me last night that People magazine has that same picture in it. I bet he planned it that way.

When you step back and see how my friend Mychal died, when we finish grieving, when all this is over and we can put things in perspective, look how that man died. He was right where the action was, where he always wanted to be. He was praying, because in the ritual for anointing, we’re always saying, Jesus come, Jesus forgive, Jesus save. He was talking to God, and he was helping someone. Can you honestly think of a better way to die? I think it was beautiful.

The firemen took his body and because they respected and loved him so much, they didn’t want to leave it in the street. They quickly carried it into a church and not just left it in the vestibule, they went up the center aisle. They put the body in front of the altar. They covered it with a sheet. And on the sheet, they placed his stole and his fire badge. And then they knelt down and they thanked God. And then they rushed back to continue their work.

And so, in my mind, I picture Mychal Judge’s body in that church, realizing that the firefighters brought him back to the Father in the Father’s house. And the words that come to me, “I am the Good Shepherd, and the Good Shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. Greater love than this no man hath than to lay down his life for his friends. And I call you my friends.”

So I make this statement to you this morning that Mychal Judge has always been my friend. And now he is also my hero.

Mychal Judge’s body was the first one released from Ground Zero. His death certificate has the number one on the top. I meditated on that fact of the thousands of people that we are going to find out who perished in that terrible holocaust. Why was Mychal Judge number one? And I think I know the reason. Mychal’s goal and purpose in life at that time was to bring the firemen to the point of death, so they would be ready to meet their maker. There are between two and three hundred firemen buried there, the commissioner told us last night.

Mychal Judge could not have ministered to them all. It was physically impossible in this life but not in the next. And I think that if he were given his choice, he would prefer to have happened what actually happened. He passed through the other side of life, and now he can continue doing what he wanted to do with all his heart. And the next few weeks, we’re going to have names added, name after name of people, who are being brought out of that rubble. And Mychal Judge is going to be on the other side of death to greet them instead of sending them there. And he’s going to greet them with that big Irish smile. He’s going to take them by the arm and the hand and say, “Welcome, I want to take you to my Father.” And so, he can continue doing in death what he couldn’t do in life.

And so, this morning we come to bury Mike Judge’s body but not his spirit. We come to bury his mind but not his dreams. We come to bury his voice but not his message. We come to bury his hands but not his good works. We come to bury his heart but not his love.
Never his love.

We his family, friends and those who loved him should return the favor that he so often did to us. We have felt his big hands at a blessing. Right now, it would be so appropriate if we called on what the liturgy tells us we are, a royal priesthood and a holy nation. And we give Mychal a blessing as he returns to the Father.

So, please stand. And raise your right hand and extend it towards my friend Mychal and repeat after me. Mychal, may the Lord bless you. May the angels lead you to your Savior. You are a sign of his presence to us. May the Lord now embrace you and hold you in his love forever. Rest in peace. Amen.

- See more at: https://www.funeralwise.com/plan/eulogy/judge/#sthash.fw7WCbj8.dpuf

for Mattie Stepanek: 'The most extraordinary person whom I have ever known in my life is Mattie Stepanek' by Jimmy Carter - 2004

22 June 2004, Gate of Heaven Cemetery, Silver Spring, Maryland, USA

Mattie Stepanek was a sufferer of MDA who died at just thirteen years of age. He wrote poetry and was a peace ambassador. His three older siblings died from dysautonomic mitochondrial myopathy, too. His mother was only diagnosed with mitochondrial disease after her four children were born. There is no available audio or video of this speech.

When I was running for governor a number of years ago, my wife and I didn’t have much money so we traveled around the state and we estimated later that we shook hands personally with 600,000 people.

Later I ran for president, as some of you may remember, and campaigned in all 50 states. Subsequently, I traveled around the world. In fact, since I left the White House, my wife and I have been to more than 120 nations. And we have known kings and queens, and we’ve known presidents and prime ministers, but the most extraordinary person whom I have ever known in my life is Mattie Stepanek.

I didn’t know Mattie until about three years ago when Make-A-Wish Foundation sent me a letter and said there was a little boy who only had a few more days to live and his final request was to meet Jimmy Carter. I was surprised and honored and within a few days, as a matter of fact, the Good Morning America program arranged for Mattie to be interviewed and for me to come there as a surprise to meet with him. He later told his mother, Jeni, that when I walked in the room he thought it was a presidential impersonator. And later, when it proved to be me, he told Jeni, and Jeni told me, that that was the first time in his life, and maybe the only time, when Mattie was speechless. But we exchanged greetings and formed, I would say, an instantaneous bond of love.

The next morning back home, Mattie woke up and he told Jeni what a wonderful time he had had. He had been dreaming, but he was so proud that he had met Jimmy Carter. And Jeni, often teasing Mattie, said, “Mattie, you must have been dreaming. You haven’t actually met Jimmy Carter,” and Mattie burst into tears and Jeni very quickly reassured him that we had actually had a personal meeting.

That meeting and our subsequent relationship have literally changed my life for the better. Mattie said that day that I had been his hero for a long time and I was sure that he was just joking and he could tell on the ABC program that I didn’t really quite believe him. And so to prove that, he sent me a video, a 20-minute-long video that he had made when he was 6-years-old, explaining the life of Jimmy Carter. And for the different segments in the video, he dressed appropriately.

So, it started out I was a little farm boy and Mattie had on ragged clothes and he spoke with what Rose (Rosalynn) and I thought was an atrocious Southern accent. And then later I was a naval officer and then later I came back to be a farmer and then ultimately was president, so he changed clothes every time. And then while I was president, he gave an appeal to human rights and peace and things of that kind and while the camera was on him, he realized later, his toes kept wiggling, he was barefoot, so for a long time he apologized to me that he should have done that segment over and at least put on shoes to be president.

He sent me another video, which I would like for all of you to try to see. It’s a video of his competition as a black belt in martial arts for the ultimate prize in that intense and demanding sport. It was incredible to see the agility of that young boy and the strength in his body.

Mattie and I began to correspond. After his death, Jeni gave me the honor of letting me come and do this speech. I had my secretary get out our correspondence. It’s that thick, on every possible subject. He was always in some degree of anguish, and I think embarrassment, when his books on the New York Times list were always above mine. And he would sympathize with me and say, “Well, you know maybe poetry just has less competition than what you are writing about.” But he was very sensitive to my feelings. We also were close enough for Mattie to share some of his problems with me in his private messages. He talked about when he and Jeni were not well off and some local churches, I’m sure not the one represented here this morning, would take up a food collection and send it to them. Mattie used to examine the labels on the food and quite often he said he would find that the date had expired and that people were giving poor people inferior food that they didn’t want to use themselves. And Mattie said, “If my books make a lot of money, we’re going to get food that’s brand new and make sure that poor people get the best food, even if we have to eat the old, outdated food in our house.”

He was very proud of the fact that he and his mother could move into a place that had windows.

I’ve thought a lot about Mattie’s religious faith. It’s all-encompassing, to include all human beings who believe in peace and justice and humility and service and compassion and love. The exact characteristics of our Savior Jesus Christ. He was still a boy, although he had the mind and the consciousness and the awareness of global affairs of a mature, philosophical adult.

One of his prime goals in life was to see the movie “Return of the King” seven times and I hope he was able to accomplish his goal. I’m not quite sure. But that was the kind of thing that he had as his ambitions.

He was as proud as I was when I won the Nobel Peace Prize, which has already been mentioned. As soon as the ceremony was over at the hall in Oslo, I went by myself to the top of a little hill right behind the place and I found a rock and I inscribed on it and I sent it to Mattie, because I felt that he shared the honor that I had received.

The last few days, I have been re-reading some of Mattie’s statements that he wrote to me, I’ve re-read the correspondence. One thing he said was, “I choose to live until death, not spend the time dying until death occurs.”

Jeni told me about one occasion when Mattie was supposed to be a main part of the program which he helped prepare to raise funds for muscular dystrophy, but when the time approached he was in the intensive care unit. They announced at first that Mattie could not attend the event that meant so much to him, in which he had helped in its preparation. He insisted on coming. When he got there and began to say his lines, he announced, “I’m out of breath. I can’t speak.” Mattie loved to dress up and to wear fancy clothes and his favorite kind of clothes, as some of you may surmise, was a tuxedo. So Jeni and Mattie arranged for him to put on a tuxedo and he said, “When I have a tuxedo on, I can talk.” So he went back with his tuxedo.

Mattie said he wanted to be, as an ultimate goal in his life, an ambassador of humanity and a daddy. Mattie had already named his first seven children and had even given personal idiosyncrasies and characteristics to the first four. He wanted to leave a human legacy and family descendants, but Mattie’s legacy, obviously, is much greater than that.

As has already been quoted, he said, “I want to be a poet, a peacemaker and a philosopher who played.” Mattie was deeply aware of international affairs and shared a lot of his thoughts with me. He was once again in the intensive care unit when the war in Iraq began and Mattie burst into uncontrollable sobs of grief and anger. Jeni said he had never cried nearly so much about his own health or his own problems.

He wrote me right after that and I will quote exactly what he said: “Dear Jimmy, I am hurting about the war and I cried last night when I saw the attack on Iraq. I am not trying to be disrespectful, but I feel like President Bush made a decision long ago that he was going to have this war. Imagine if he had spent as much time and energy considering the possibility of peace as he has convincing others of the inevitability of war. We’d be at a different point in history today.”

Mattie was obviously extremely idealistic, but not completely idealistic. He also wrote me in a subsequent letter, “I know that I should be peaceful with everyone, but it’s also not smart,” he said, “to put yourself in a dangerous situation. Like even though I would want to talk to Osama bin Laden about peace in the future, I wouldn’t want to be alone with him in his cave.” In the same letter he asked me if I would join him not just in that meeting, but in writing a book that Mattie wanted to call, and had already named, “Just Peace.”

In an incredible way for a child his age, he analyzed the semantics of the word “just.” The title was “Just Peace” and he said “just” had so many connotations that he thought that was the best word to put before “peace.” He said “just” could be a minimal expectation, just peace, nothing else. It could mean just peace and peace as a paramount commitment, above everything else. And it could mean a peace that was exemplified by justice.

I spent seven years earlier in my life writing a book of poems about which Mattie was graciously complimentary. Poetry seemed to flow out of Mattie, kind of like an automatic stream, directed by inspiration through Mattie’s hands for the enjoyment of hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of people. I want to read just a few of them with which many of you are familiar, because he combined humor with serious thoughts. All of them I would say are unique, surprising when you read them.

One of them is titled “About Angels” and he honored me by letting me write the foreword to this book, called “Journey Through Heartsongs.”

About Angels
Do you know what angels wear?
They wear
Angel-halos and Angel-wings, and
Angel-dresses and Angel-shirts under them, and
Angel-underwear and Angel-shoes and Angel-socks, and
On their heads
They wear
Angel-hair –
Except if they don’t have any hair.
Some children and grownups
Don’t have any hair because they
Have to take medicine that makes it fall out.
And sometimes,
The medicine makes them all better.
And sometimes,
The medicine doesn’t make them all better,
And they die.
And they don’t have any Angel-hair.
So do you know what God does then?
He gives them an
Angel-wig.
And that’s what Angels wear.

I like them all, but there’s another I would like to read.

Heavenly Greeting
Dear God,
For a long time,
I have wondered about
How You will meet me
When I die and come to
Live with You in Heaven.
I know You reach out
Your hand to welcome
Your people into Your home,
But I never knew if You
Reached out Your right hand,
Or if You
Reached out Your left hand.
But now I don’t have to
Wonder about that anymore.
I asked my mommy and
She told me that You
Reach out both of Your hands,
And welcome us with
A great big giant hug.
Wow!
I can’t wait for my hug, God.
Thank you,
And Amen.

And another one that he wrote:

I Could…If They Would
If they would find a cure when I’m a kid…
I could ride a bike and sail on rollerblades, and
I could go on really long nature hikes.
If they would find a cure when I’m a teenager…
I could earn my license and drive a car, and
I could dance every dance at my senior prom.
If they would find a cure when I’m a young adult…
I could travel around the world and teach peace, and
I could marry and have children of my own.
If they would find a cure when I’m grown old…
I could visit exotic places and appreciate culture, and
I could proudly share pictures of my grandchildren.
If they would find a cure when I’m alive…
I could live each day without pain and machines, and
I could celebrate the biggest thank you of life ever.
If they would find a cure when I’m buried into Heaven…
I could still celebrate with my brothers and sister there, and
I could still be happy knowing that I was part of the effort.

And the last poem I will read is titled:

When I Die (Part II)
When I die, I want to be
A child in Heaven.
I want to be
A ten-year-old cherub.
I want to be
A hero in Heaven,
And a peacemaker,
Just like my goal on earth.
I will ask God if I can
Help the people in purgatory.
I will help them think,
About their life,
About their spirits,
About their future.
I will help them
Hear their own Heartsongs again,
So they can finally
See the face of God,
So soon.
When I die,
I want to be,
Just like I want to be
Here on earth.

Well, it’s hard to know anyone who has suffered more than Mattie. Sandy sent us almost daily reports about his bleeding, internally and from his fingers. I doubt that anyone in this great auditorium has ever suffered so much except his mother Jeni, and our Savior Jesus Christ, who is also here with us today. I always saw the dichotomy between Mattie as a child and with the characteristics and intelligence and awareness of an adult. Just as we see the dichotomy of Jesus Christ who was fully a human being at the same time as truly God.

I would say that my final assessment is that Mattie was an angel. Someone said that to him once and he said, “No, no.” He was very modest. But really in the New Testament language, angel and messenger are the same and there’s no doubt that Mattie was an angel of God, a messenger of God.

He was concerned about his legacy, wanting to have seven children and talking about his grandchildren, but Mattie’s legacy is forever because his Heartsongs will resonate in the hearts of people forever. I thank God that he is no longer suffering and that he’s with the Prince of Peace, getting big hugs in Heaven and maybe wearing a tuxedo.

To learn more about Mattie's legacy, please visit MDA's website at http://mda.org/about/bio/mattie-jt-st... and The Mattie J.T. Stepanek Foundation website at http://www.mattieonline.com.

For Micky Mantle: 'We can still recall the immediate tingle in that instant of recognition when a Mickey Mantle popped up in a pack of Topps bubble gum cards'', by Bob Costas - 1995

20 August 1995, Dallas, USA

You know, it occurs to me as we’re all sitting here thinking of Mickey, he’s probably somewhere getting an earful from Casey Stengel, and no doubt quite confused by now.

One of Mickey’s fondest wishes was that he be remembered as a great teammate, to know that the men he played with thought well of him. But it was more than that. Moose and Whitey and Tony and Yogi and Bobby and Hank, what a remarkable team you were. And the stories of the visits you guys made to Mickey’s bedside the last few days were heartbreakingly tender. It meant everything to Mickey, as would the presence of so many baseball figures past and present here today.

I was honored to be asked to speak by the Mantle family today. I am not standing here as a broadcaster. Mel Allen is the eternal voice of the Yankees and that would be his place. And there are others here with a longer and deeper association with Mickey than mine.

But I guess I’m here, not so much to speak for myself as to simply represent the millions of baseball-loving kids who grew up in the ’50s and ’60s and for whom Mickey Mantle was baseball.

And more than that, he was a presence in our lives-a fragile hero to whom we had an emotional attachment so strong and lasting that it defied logic. Mickey often said he didn’t understand it, this enduring connection and affection-the men now in their 40s and 50s, otherwise perfectly sensible, who went dry in the mouth and stammered like schoolboys in the presence of Mickey Mantle.

Maybe Mick was uncomfortable with it, not just because of his basic shyness, but because he was always too honest to regard himself as some kind of deity. But that was never really the point. In a very different time than today, the first baseball commissioner, Kenesaw Mountain Landis said, “Every boy builds a shrine to some baseball hero, and before that shrine, a candle always burns.”

For a huge portion of my generation, Mickey Mantle was that baseball hero. And for reasons that no statistics, no dry recitation of the facts can possibly capture, he was the most compelling baseball hero of our lifetime. And he was our symbol of baseball at a time when the game meant something to us that perhaps it no longer does.

Mickey Mantle had those dual qualities so seldom seen-exuding dynamism and excitement, but at the same time touching your heart-flawed, wounded. We knew there was something poignant about Mickey Mantle before we know what Poignant meant. We didn’t just root for him, we felt for him.

Long before many of us ever cracked a serious book, we knew something about mythology as we watched Mickey Mantle run out a home run through the lengthening shadows of a late Sunday afternoon at Yankee Stadium.

There was a greatness about him, but vulnerability too. He was our guy. When he was hot, we felt great. When he slumped or got hurt, we sagged a bit too. We tried to crease our caps like him; keel in an imaginary on-deck circle like him; run like him, heads down, elbows up.

Billy Crystal is here today. Billy says that at his bar mitzvah he spoke in an Oklahoma drawl. Billy’s here today because he loved Mickey Mantle, and millions like him are here today in spirit as well. It’s been said that the truth is never pure and rarely simple.

Mickey Mantle was too humble and honest to believe that the whole truth about him could be found on a Wheaties box or a baseball card. But the emotional truths about childhood have a power that transcends objective fact. They stay with us through all the years, withstanding the ambivalence that so often accompanies the experience of adults.

That’s why we can still recall the immediate tingle in that instant of recognition when a Mickey Mantle popped up in a pack of Topps bubble gum cards-a treasure lodged between an Eli Grba and a Pumpsie Green.

That’s why we smile today, recalling those October afternoons when we’d sneak a transistor radio into school to follow Mickey Mantle and the Yankees in the World Series.

Or when I think of Mr. Tomasee, a very wise sixth-grade teacher who understood that the World Series was more important, at least for one day, than any school lesson could be. So he brought his black and white TV from home, plugged it in and let us watch it right there in school through the flicker and static. It was richer and more compelling than anything I’ve seen on a high-resolution, big-screen TV.

Of course, the bad part, Bobby, was that Koufax struck 15 of you guys out that day.

My phone’s been ringing the past few weeks as Mickey fought for his life. I’ve heard from people I hadn’t seen or talked to in years, guys I played stickball with, even some guys who took Willie’s side in those endless Mantle, Mays arguments. They’re grown up now. They have their families. They’re not even necessarily big baseball fans anymore. But they felt something hearing about Mickey, and they figured I did too.

In the last year, Mickey Mantle, always so hard on himself, finally came to accept and appreciate the distinction between a role model and a hero. The fist he often was not, the second he always will be.

And, in the end, people got it. And Mickey Mantle got from something other than misplaced and mindless celebrity worship. He got something far more meaningful. He got love. Love for what he had been, love for what he made us feel, love for the humanity and sweetness that was always there mixed in the flaws and all the pain that racked his body and his soul.

We wanted to tell him that it was OK, that what he had been was enough. We hoped he felt that Mutt Mantle would have understood that Merlyn and the boys loved him. And then in the end, something remarkable happened, the way it does for champions. Mickey Mantle rallied. His heart took over, and he had some innings as fine as any in 1956 or with his buddy, Roger, in 1961.

But this time he did it in the harsh and trying summer of ’95. And what he did was stunning. The sheer grace of that ninth inning, the total absence of self-pity, the simple eloquence and honesty of his pleas to others to take heed of his mistakes.

All of America watched in admiration. His doctors said he was, in many ways, the most remarkable patient they’d ever seen. His bravery so stark and real, that even those used to seeing people in dire circumstances where moved by his example.

Because of that example, organ donations are up drastically all across America. A cautionary tale has been honestly told and perhaps will affect some lives for the better.

And our last memories of Mickey Mantle are as heroic as the first. None of us, Mickey included, would want to be held to account for every moment of our lives. But how many of us could say that our best moments were as magnificent as his?

In a cartoon from this morning’s The Dallas Morning News. Maybe some of you saw it. It got torn a little bit on the way from the hotel to here. There’s a figure here, St. Peter I take it to be, with his arm around Mickey, that broad back and the number 7. We know some of what went on. Sorry, we can’t let you in, but before you go, God wants to know if you’d sign these six dozen baseballs.”

Well, there were days when Mickey Mantle was so darn good that we kids bet that even God would want his autograph. But like the cartoon says, I don’t think Mick needed to worry much about the other part.

I just hope God has a place for him where he can run again. Where he can play practical jokes on his teammates and smile that boyish smile, ’cause God knows, no one’s perfect. And God knows there’s something special about heroes.

So long, Mick. Thanks.

for Steve Irwin: 'My Daddy was my hero', by Bindi Irwin - 2006

20 September 2006, Australia Zoo, Queensland, Australia

My Daddy was my hero – he was always there for me when I needed him. He listened to me and taught me so many things, but most of all he was fun. I know that Daddy had an important job. He was working to change the world so everyone would love wildlife like he did. He built a hospital to help animals and he bought lots of land to give animals a safe place to live.

He took me and my brother and my Mum with him all the time.

We filmed together, caught crocodiles together and loved being in the bush together. I don’t want Daddy’s passion to ever end. I want to help endangered wildlife just like he did.

I have the best Daddy in the whole world and I will miss him every day. When I see a crocodile I will always think of him and I know that Daddy made this zoo so everyone could come and learn to love all the animals. Daddy made this place his whole life and now it’s our turn to help Daddy.

for Robert Ferguson: 'During the wake we tell favourite stories about the person that’s passed and it’s not always very flattering for the person, either', by Craig Ferguson - 2005

30 January 2006, aired on The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson, LA, California, USA

My father was 75 years old and he lived a very full life. He did everything that he set out to do. Where I come from, in the Celtic tradition it’s kind of a wake where we talk about the person’s life, there’s a lot of drinking usually, but of course I won’t be taking part in that. I think others may get involved in that for obvious reasons.

During the wake we tell favorite stories about the person that’s passed and it’s not always very flattering for the person, either. It’s kind of a roast sometimes. It’s a celebration of a human being with faults and quirks and all the idiosyncrasies that go with being a person and my father was certainly that.

My father was born on St. Patrick’s Day in 1930 which was a source of great pride for his Irish Catholic mother and some consternation for his Scottish Protestant father. He grew up from a poor background. He grew up in Glasgow in Scotland during World War II. Glasgow was bombed heavily during the war and all of the kids were evacuated out of the cities and put to work on the farms in the countryside to escape the German bombing.

It was supposed to be some kind of an idyllic reprieve, but my father’s experience was more like a Dicksonian workhouse. It didn’t work out well for him. It was very tough for him. He didn’t talk about it much. In the six years that he was there it was just awful. He had a very tough childhood.

From where he started to where he ended up with the journey so vast and incredible it’s too much for me to hope to emulate…”

My father spent two years in the British army stationed in Germany. He worked in the post office in Scotland for 44 years. He started as a telegram boy delivering telegrams on the Norton ex-army base where you change the gear by taking your hands off the handlebars, called the suicide shift.

They were too poor to emulate Marlon Brando in the Wild One with the silk scarf, so they used to wear white tea towels around their necks to look like Americans.

I have lived in America for eleven years and I have never seen anyone wearing a white tea towel around their necks. But I’m still looking.

By the time my dad retired, he had about 600 men working for him at the Edinburgh post office in the capital of Scotland. He was a chief inspector and he was the boss and he went all the way up. He did it through hard work.

He was a Scottish nationalist, my father. He believed in an independent Scotland. He also believed in this place. He believed in America and in the opportunity it offered. My father introduced me to America literally. He brought me here when I was 13. We used to get cheap fares.

Cheap air fares from Freddy Laker and I think it was $100 or something and we visited my father’s brother, my Uncle James, who had moved to Long Island. I talked often about the summer I spent there as a teenager as a 13 year old.

My father said, “Where did you get the idea I had the whole summer off work? We were there for three weeks.”

But in my mind it was a life-changing experience. I fell in love with American then. I decided then to come back.

My father believed in hard work and I believe that’s how my father expressed love. There is something spiritual in hard work. I think spirituality isn’t all about aromatherapy and scented candles. I think for my dad it was about getting up early and working hard and making a better life for his kids. And that’s what this man did.

Every Christmas at the post office, there’s something called the pressure. Where the mail starts to build up and there’s more and more mail and the postal workers were working 12 hour shifts all the time. It was crazy the amount of work they were doing. Now I think they call it going postal.

He worked his ass off the entire month of December. But every Christmas morning, he woke up with me and my brother and my sister and helped put the presents together. He must have been blooming tired. But he did it and he never mentioned how tired he was.

But I think he must have been tired.

My father was in charge of postal workers. Postal workers in Glascow – they are tough men. These are not guys who say “I am lactose intolerant. Can we get soy in the cafeteria?” They weren’t guys like that. He was a big man, my father. And he had a buzz cut, my father. It made him look like he had a scrubbing brush up here. And that was his nickname; they called him “Big Scrubber,” and the postal workers used to me and say, “You’re Big Scrubbers boy,” and I would say, “I’m Little Scrubber. Wee scrubber.” But I could never really live up to that.

When I was broke, my dad gave me a job as a temporary worker in the post office in December. It was back when I was still drinking and I got drunk and I was an hour late for work and my father was the boss and I showed up at 5 am and not 4 am. Another worker saw me and said, “Your father knows you’re late and he’s got a special assignment for you.” And what he did was send me to the Glascow airport to load mailbags onto the planes in December. I have never been so cold in my life. And remember Glascow is on the same latitude as Moscow and I had an incredible hangover and I was late because I’d been drunk, but I was never late for work again, I’ll tell you that.

My father was a great whistler. I don’t know if that’s important, but I remember it. He could do that vibrato thing. It was fantastic.

And he loved the Road Runner cartoons. I’ve said that here before. They really made him laugh. I know, I don’t get it, either, but he loved them.

He also loved the Tweety Bird and Sylvester. He loved how stupid Sylvester was. “That cat’s so stupid; the bird wins all the time.” I loved watching television with my dad. He had very unique viewing habits…When I was watching television with him, I would sit in front of him and he would sit behind me and he would put his hand on my head and I loved that. And he did it last week in the hospital. Probably the first time in 25 years or something and from his bed, he put his hand on my head.

It was amazing. It was great. He was a man of few words, my dad. I get my talking from my mother’s side of the family. But I was never in any doubt that he loved me. He wasn’t from a generation of people who said, “Son, we need to talk about our feelings. Let’s hug.” My dad would just say, “Hey,” but you knew what he meant when he said it. And the relationship that I had…I have with my father is not unlike the relationship I have with my home country – with Scotland. I complain about it. I grumble about it. I can be mean about it sometimes, but I love it beyond reason. It’s where I’m from. It’s what I am.

Last week you know, we were cleaning out some stuff in his room so we could make him more comfortable when he got out of the hospital and I found some stuff – a letter of commendation from his bosses at the post office. This letter had been written in 1961. It had been in his pouch since 1961. A fight had broken out in the mail trains where he used to work and he stopped it. It was a terrible incident and people were very grateful he had stopped it and the incident was dated September 1961 and the letter was in October 1961. I was born in May 1962, so the letter was around the time I was conceived and I mentioned that to my father in the hospital last week and said “That was a big month,” and he said, “Hey.”

He was a strong man, my dad and we didn’t always get along. Anyone who knows me knows I’ve got some opinions about stuff and you know, we got it straight years ago. But when I was a teenager, well, the night after my sister’s wedding, we got into a fight. Well, not really a fight, he said that if I didn’t stop being a jerk, he’d hit me and I ran away.

But I want to tell you about who he was. When I went into rehab, it was in the South of England and my parents took the bus from Scotland to England to this rehab and it was a very alien environment for them and they came and they sat in this room and the counselor was there and we were going to have the family talk and my father said, “Just before we start, everybody, I want to say something. Craig, I am not going to stop drinking.”

I said, “Alright. You don’t need to stop drinking. It’s about me stopping drinking.”

I want to tell you about something that happened last week. My father had a mantra. He had this thing he always used to say. When I was going into show business, my father was always telling me to get a trade so I’d have something to fall back on. My father wasn’t like that. He’d always say, “Do a job that you love. Job satisfaction. As long as you have job satisfaction, you can be anything you want to be. And he kept repeating it and my brother and I would tease him about it. “Job satisfaction, You can be anything you want to be.”

And so we’re in the hospital last week and my father was dying and he knew he was dying. And my son was there with me. He is 4 ½ and he drew a picture for my dad of some trees and a beautiful day and we put it on the wall and he sang to my dad, “Rudolf the Red Nosed Reindeer,” which you know, everyone wants to hear when they’re in pain and it’s the middle of January. And my son sang him the whole thing. And he got through that. And then my son said, “Oh, I’ve got a great idea.” He went underneath my dad’s hospital bed and he said, “I am going to sing a song and you can’t see me.” For some reason he thought that would be very funny. Maybe I’ll try it here one night.

And he sang a song he had picked up from on the kid’s albums that come out. We were sitting there with my dad and the great drama of the deathbed and my son sang, “You can be anything you want to be. You can be…” Even in the pain, I saw that my dad had a smile that came across his face and it was fantastic.

I miss him. You didn’t know him and that’s your loss. He was a great man. And it’s hard to say goodbye to people. It’s hard to say goodbye to parents. When I left my dad, we got it straight before he died. I couldn’t speak, so a gesture came to me that I think worked and I think he knew it as well. I punched my chest and I threw him my heart. Good night, dad.

for Edmund Hillary: 'He went to a height and a place no man had gone before', by Helen Clark - 2008

22 January 2008, St Mary's, Parnell, Auckland, New Zealand

There is no available video of this speech. There is audio here.

On 29 May 1953 a young New Zealander stood on top of Mt Everest with his climbing companion Tenzing Norgay. That young man was Edmund Hillary, soon to be knighted, and to become the most famous New Zealander of our time.

Sir Ed’s achievement on that day cannot be underestimated. He went to a height and a place no man had gone before. He went there with 1950s, not 21st Century, technology. He went there with well honed climbing skills, developed in New Zealand, Europe, and Nepal itself.

But above all, he went there with attitude – with a clear goal, with courage, and with a determination to succeed.

That attitude, Sir Ed’s “can do” pragmatism, and his humility as the praise flowed for him over the decades, endeared Sir Ed to our nation and made him an inspiration and a role model for generations of New Zealanders.

Today we all mourn with Lady Hillary, with Peter and Sarah and all Sir Ed’s extended family, knowing that their loss is personal and profound, and valuing their willingness to share this farewell with us all.

We mourn as a nation, because we know we are saying goodbye to a friend.

Whether we knew Sir Ed personally a lot, a little, or not at all, he was a central part of our New Zealand family. My parents’ and grandparents’ generation followed Ed’s adventures. Those of us who cannot remember the news of that great climb grew up knowing of the man and the legend, as today’s children do.

And how privileged we were to have that living legend with us for 88 years.

Prior to Sir Ed’s conquest of Everest, the mountain had often been described as the Third Pole. It had defeated fifteen previous expeditions. Reaching the summit seemed to be beyond mere mortals. It was considered one of our world’s last great challenges.

So when the news broke of the ascent by Ed Hillary, a beekeeper from New Zealand, and Tenzing Norgay, a Sherpa from Nepal, it made headlines around the world. This was one of the defining moments of the twentieth century, and earned these two brave men their place in history.

There then followed many other achievements of note.

Earlier this month, the fiftieth anniversary was observed of Sir Ed’s journey to the South Pole – when he became the first person to make the land crossing since Amundsen and Scott.

In Kiwi style, Sir Ed did the crossing on a tractor.

From the early 1960s, Sir Ed began the work which is his living legacy, founding the Himalayan Trust dedicated to the wellbeing of the Sherpa people in the high mountain valleys of Nepal, and supporting the education of their children and the development of health services.

Great tragedy struck Sir Ed and his family in 1975 with the death of Louise Lady Hillary and Belinda in Nepal. Yet Sir Ed was to carry on his work in Nepal, and for many years now June Lady Hillary, has been at his side, supporting him and the Himalayan Trust, and Sir Ed’s many other endeavours.

Sir Ed lent his prestige as patron to so many good causes. Schools and other institutions, organisations and facilities bear his name with great pride.

And Sir Ed also served our country with distinction as High Commissioner to India, based in New Delhi with accreditation to his much-loved Nepal.

Sir Ed described himself as a person of modest abilities. In reality he was a colossus. He was our hero. He brought fame to our country. We admired his achievements and the great international respect in which he was held.

But above all, we loved Sir Ed for what he represented – a determination to succeed against the odds, humility, an innate sense of fair play, and a tremendous sense of service to the community, at home and abroad.

Sir Edmund Hillary’s extraordinary life has been an inspiration to our small nation and to many beyond our shores. As individuals, we may not be able to match Sir Ed’s abilities or strength, but we can all strive to match his humanity and compassion for others.

His values were strong; they are timeless; and they will endure.

May Sir Edmund Hillary rest in peace

Norman Mailer: 'Norman Mailer passed away yesterday after celebrating his fifteenth divorce and sixteenth wedding', (self penned) by Norman Mailer - 1979

1979, published as a joke in Boston Magazine. Mailer died 10 November 2007

Novelist Shelved, By Norman Mailer

Norman Mailer passed away yesterday after celebrating his fifteenth divorce and sixteenth wedding. “I just don’t feel the old vim,” complained the writer recently. He was renowned in publishing circles for his blend of fictional journalism and factual fiction, termed by literary critic William Buckley: Contemporaneous Ratiocinative Aesthetical Prolegomena. Buckley was consequentially sued by Mailer for malicious construction of invidious acronyms. “Norman does take himself seriously,” was Mr. Buckley’s reply. “Of course he is the last of those who do.”

At the author’s bedside were eleven of his fifteen ex-wives, twenty-two of his twenty-four children, and five of his seven grandchildren, of whom four are older than six of their uncles and aunts.

At present, interest revolves around the estate. Executors have warned that Mailer, although earning an average income of one and a half million dollars a year, has had to meet an annual overhead of two million, three hundred thousand, of which two million, two hundred and fifty thousand went in child support, alimony, and back IRS payments. It is estimated that his liabilities outweigh his assets by eight million, six hundred thousand.

When asked, on occasion why he married so often, the former Pulitzer Prize winner replied, “To get divorced. You don’t know anything about a woman until you meet her in court.”

At the memorial service, passages from his favorite literary works, all penned by himself, were read, as well as passages from prominent Americans.

His old friend, Truman Capote, said, “He was always so butch. I thought he’d outlive us all.”

Gore Vidal, his famous TV and cocktail-party adversary, complained sadly, “Norman did lack the wit that copes. I would add that he had the taste of Snopes, but why advertise William Faulkner, who’s responsible for everything godawful in American penmanship—one can’t call it letters.”

Andy Warhol said, “I always thought Norman kept a low profile. That’s what I liked about him so much.”

Gloria Steinem stated: “A pity. He was getting ready to see the light.”

Jimmy Carter, serving his fifth consecutive term as president, replied in answer to a question at his press conference this morning, “It is my wife’s and I regret that we never did get to invite Norman Miller [sic] to the White House, but we will mourn his passing. He did his best to improve the state of American book-writing and reading, which we all need and applaud.”

for Bill Bradshaw: 'Lesson 1: These are the teams worthy of your support: Geelong, Boston Celtics, Liverpool'. by son Finn Bradshaw - 2016

20 March 2016, Melbourne, Australia

As we’ve heard today, my father was many things. Musician, athlete, mentor, raconteur. But above all he was an educator. Not just in the classroom. But throughout his daily life.

So in that spirit, today I want to share with you Lessons From my Father.

Lesson 1: These are the teams worthy of your support: Geelong, Boston Celtics, Liverpool.

In my childhood, two of those three had glorious histories of grand achievement. The other was known for, well, having a good time. Many was the time as a child I pondered whether I could change clubs, to leave behind the taint of Geelong. Thank God, or rather the Son of God, I didn’t.

But when I stood back, there was a thread running through those clubs, that explained why they attracted his passion. All stood for something beyond a blind drive to succeed at all costs.

Liverpool was known for their stylish, team-oriented play, and their most famous manager gave us the immortal line “Some people think football is a matter of life and death … it is much more important than that.”

Boston delivered extraordinary success from an unrelenting drive to play the perfect game. The team also defied the often racist undertones of their city to be racially progressiveness. Bill followed the Celtics because he saw Bill Russell — one of the top 3 basketball players of all time — play at the 1956 Olympics. When Russell was appointed coach, he was NBA’s the first black head coach.

And Geelong, well, until 2007, it was known for playing beautiful, free flowing football that never quite resulted in a flag. Being a Geelong supporter in the 80s and 90s certainly built character.

Sport for Bill was something so much more than just a result on a scoreboard. It was a way to teach young people about life. How to be part of a team. How to sacrifice. How to improve yourself.

He loved two sports over all others: soccer, and most of all basketball.

Bill often said that if you wanted to develop a sport to produce good soldiers, you would have invented American Football.

But if you wanted to develop artists and musicians, you would have created basketball, a game that relies on five people playing the game in perfect harmony; five whizzing parts blending together to become a greater whole, while leaving room for improvisation and individual choice.

One of the basketball coaches Bill respected most was Phil Jackson who described it: “Basketball is an improvisational game, similar to jazz. If someone drops a note, someone else must step into the vacuum and drive the beat that sustains the team.”

Bill found music in most things, and he loved the tempo of a beautifully choreographed offence. He loved music so much, and passed that passion down to me, even if we share little of the same taste, no matter how often I subjected him to the Beatles, and unfortunately for me, none of the talent.

Lesson 2: If in doubt, be generous (Note: this doesn’t apply to referees).

When I reached a drinking age, he gave me two sterling pieces of advice: If invited to party, when you turn up you should have to use your feet to knock (as your hands will be encumbered with drink).

And when you start a new job, do go for beers on a Friday night, and when you do, always make sure you buy the first round. It ingratiates you to your new colleagues, and means you can leave when you want.

Bill was generous with his time, his knowledge and his wealth. When he was coaching me in the early days of my basketball career, we’d pick up so many kids on the way, there would be guys sitting in the boot of our hatchback.

His time away from work, was just time he could donate to other people.

One story that stands out, was when my cousin was living in a precarious situation in back blocks around Byron Bay with her young son, her father was talking to my dad about what to do. Without a moment’s hesitation, Bill said they should go and ensure she was safe. The next day, they drove up, and spent days helping her with the difficult decision to leave and come back.

There was no grandstanding or hectoring in that act. It was just doing what needed to be done.

Lesson 3: I’m going to paraphrase David Halberstam here: A professional is someone who does their job on the days they don’t feel like doing it.

I can’t remember him ever having a day off sick, let alone chuck a sickie.

Whether for work, basketball or anything else people were relying on him for.

For Bill, work was how you overcame the advantages others might have, whether wealth, privilege, athletic prowess.

The embodiment, in his telling, of this was a team he coached in the early 70s.

He never tired of talking about the Coburg Devils. How he took them from the Coburg Tech playground to Australian champions. He especially liked that when he picked the Victorian team, he took his whole Coburg team, admitting only one player from the powerhouse Melbourne Tigers team into their squad.

They were his masterpiece, his Mona Lisa. Kids uniting in a singular focus, beating teams bigger and more talented than them.

Lesson 4: At times there is the right thing to do and the wrong thing to do. You know which is which. Choose the right one.

I probably see more grey than my dad did. There was a lot of black and white in his world.

Bill could never understand people who played politics for their own ends. He couldn’t stand coaches who played their most talented but selfish players at the expense of the hard working team oriented ones. And he really didn’t get the right hand side of the political spectrum.

There was a time that the politics of his workplace made him physically sick for many months.

He could have been a civil engineer, which would have been far more rewarding financially, but gave that up to teach because he felt had a calling. He believed we were here to make the world a better place. And you did that through your actions every moment of the day.

That made him an exacting basketball coach. Especially if you were his son in the team.

It might be also why he loved kids so much. Their world was a bit simpler. And a bit more full of joy than the world the bureaucrats were creating in schools and sporting clubs.

He was a man who — when not between the lines of a basketball court — was full of twinkling eyes and mirthful grins. A regular fixture of my childhood was the Goons on Radio National and the Marx Brothers on the TV.

But when it came to important matters — justice, education, respect for others — there was only the right thing to do, and the wrong thing. And if you wanted Bill’s respect and friendship, you better choose the right one.

Lesson 5: High expectations don’t help anything.

This attitude could result in zen like lessons. For example when I was a kid, I remember once bursting into tears because I’d asked for money for a vending machine and instead of a Solo, I got a Coke (which I claimed not to like at the time). Bill was as annoyed as he ever was with me then, because instead of focussing on the beautiful drink I did haven, I was worried about what I didn’t have. Just like the Buddist’s glass, that holds water so well even though it is already broken.

It could go to extreme lengths. Having been cursed with supporting the Cats, and suffering through 4 grand final losses, I remember being at the 2007 Grand Final, and I called him at three quarter time when we were 13 goals up and saying “we’re going to finally win one!”, and his immediate response was “There’s still a quarter to play!”

For a coach, the result is never certain until the final whistle …

Lesson 6: You don’t full court press to get a steal in the back court. You do it to make the other team play at your pace.

That’s one for the hoops nuffies in the room. But it spoke to his greater philosophy: Don’t do things for the immediate return. Do them because they give you the best chance of long term success. Trust in the process.

Whether creating Diamond Creek, or planning the beautiful mudbrick house he and my mum built, or starting a basketball team, Bill knew the small things were the most important things to focus on. Get them wrong, and it all falls apart.

Again, a quote from Phil Jackson nails Bill’s philosophy:

“Like life, basketball is messy and unpredictable. It has its way with you, no matter how hard you try to control it. The trick is to experience each moment with a clear mind and open heart. When you do that, the game–and life–will take care of itself.” How true

And finally, Lesson 7: When choosing to love, love with all you heart.

Sue Circosta, who spoke so beautifully earlier, once said she could tell of me that I was someone who had never doubted they were loved.

Bill and I were close throughout my childhood, him patiently sending down endless overs in the nets or feeding the ball back to me as worked around the key.

But it wasn’t until I met Ali, and then later when Clementine and Teddy came along that I realised his greatest gift to me: being prepared to give yourself over wholly to the loves in your life.

My mum was the world to my dad. He was always remarking how amazing she was, how tough, how smart, how determined.

He loved that she opened his mind to a whole new world of ideas, people and laughter.

And nothing could weaken that love.

Even when dementia had wrapped its tentacles around his mind that he no longer recognised me or other members of our family, his face would light up when Delia entered the room.

The last dying ember of his personality, before the disease took complete control, was his love for her. How amazing they both got to experience that.

Since Bill’s death, so many people have remarked to on how often I spoke about my father, and the obvious pride and affection I had for him.

At times it has felt that everything in my life is borne directly from him. This body. My love of sport, which has been the focus of my work for many years now. The love of the Marx Brothers, Mel Brooke, Asterisk and so many other touchstones.

For some, such a strong connection to their father might be crushing. But to me it’s always been my pride, my inspiration, my True North.

I’m just so glad his legacy will live on through all the people here today. Thank you all for coming.

And thank you, Bill. Love you.

There are other tributes to Bill on Finn's site.

For Stanley Kubrick: 'It was Kubrick that showed me how the film worked as a whole', by Edward Champion

12 March 1999, Hertfordshire, United Kingdom

Uncompromising. Meticulous. Control freak. Reclusive. These were all words that were attached to Stanley Kubrick throughout his life. But they were also words that described a man who changed the rules of filmmaking. Kubrick merged the artistic film with the commercial, melding his stark independent vision with the coffers of Hollywood in a way that no other filmmaking genius — not even Welles — has managed to accomplish and may never succeed at doing again.

The death of Kubrick came as a shock to me. His legacy — the twelve films that he created (including the forthcoming Eyes Wide Shut) — impacted me personally and made me see film in a completely different way. In 1987, I saw my first Kubrick film, Full Metal Jacket, and discovered that film was more than just a medium that entertained. As I became engrossed with the moral disintegration of Private Gomer Pyle, as I watched raw recruits turn into seasoned veterans without remorse or morality, I realized that film had the ability to transcend mere storytelling and become an unforgettable visceral and visual experience.

I soon found myself renting every Kubrick film I could get my hands on, and became captivated with every frame, every character, and every painstakingly crafted allegorical touch that Kubrick embellished his films with. The giddy lunacy of Dr. Strangelove, the evolutionary epic of 2001: A Space Odyssey, and the moral philosophizing of A Clockwork Orange. I was amazed that the man could move seamlessly from one genre to another.

I watched these films over and over. Who was the man that created these images?

I began to read books. I collected an arsenal of magazine articles and clippings and learned that he had moved to England to maintain control of his films after he had become disappointed with the way Hollywood had attempted to wrestle control of Spartacus away from him. Through Kubrick, I learned that directing a film was more than just an artistic challenge. It was, above all, a relentless battle with the people who gave you the money.

I soon found myself experimenting with a video camera, hoping to recapture the visual poignancy of 2001’s bone being tossed up into the air and becoming a spaceship, trying to reproduce the visual beauty of Barry Lyndon’s candlelit imagery. And I soon moved on to Super 8 and 16mm formats, all the while keeping a mental checklist of all the true Kubrickean moments that I remembered.

There were other filmmakers that inspired me, who showed me how to work with the film form in the way in which they executed a scene or accomplished a shot. But it was Kubrick that showed me how the film worked as a whole.

To be fair, Kubrick was frequently tough on his actors. In A Clockwork Orange, he kept Malcolm McDowell’s eyes open to that horrible metal device for nearly twelve hours straight. He shot a relentless number of takes for nearly every shot, 47 takes for a simple shot of Scatman Crothers crossing the street in The Shining. He took years upon years to create a film just to get it right. But his talent was so enormous, so all-encompassing, so vast, so true to the film form, that somehow all the horror stories seemed justified.

With Kubrick now gone, I wonder if film will ever be the same. He was a Dostoevsky, a Melville and a Tolstoy all rolled up in one. He was an uncompromising giant unafraid to tackle controversial issues and explore the human condition through his unique vision.

I can only hope that there will be a filmmaker of equal stature in the years to come.

- See more at: https://www.funeralwise.com/plan/eulogy/kubrick/#sthash.LLHDmd4P.dpuf

for Jim Henson: 'And we did have fun, we had such great silly fun together', by Frank Oz - 1990

21 May 1990, St John the Divine Church, New York, USA

Jim and I were opposites in so many ways.

I think it worked mainly because of patience and understanding, that which we had together both personally and in performance. And in the creative partnership that I shared with him and others.

I knew, not all the time, but in the last fifteen years or so, that he was a very singular human being.

Looking here I think I only realise now how large a man this was.  This man that I just worked with and played with, and had so much fun with.

And we did have fun, we had such great silly fun together. The best thing of all—the best thing—is when you watched Jim laugh until he cried. It usually happened when we were recording something, or performing with the gang ... and we’d get so punch and silly at two in the morning. And Jim would ... just get that high whine ... and  he couldn't speak, and the tears were rolling down, and he'd try to add to the joke and he just couldn't do it, and it was the best thing to see because you knew he was always busy and always working under pressure. And thinking, it was such a purge and a release—it was wonderful, the best thing to see him do that.

I can’t tell you how much he supported me. I joined when I was 19, 27 years ago, and he’s given me the most amazing opportunities. And he’s taught me so much, just by being the person that he is. It’s very important to me. There's so much to tell. Let me just zero in on one little thing.

About fifteen years ago, we were doing Saturday Night Live, the first year of Saturday Night Live, Jim and I and a few others of the gang were doing some puppets there. And it was before Christmas , and it was just prior to dress rehearsal and the other guys had gone away to have lunch or something, so Jim and I were hanging around the halls, and as I recall in the hallway Jim came up with a camera. And he said in his own quiet, enthusiastic way, he said, ‘Frank, I need to go in a dressing room with you, and um, see if you’d take off all of your clothes soI could take a picture of you naked?’

I said, ‘whoooa!’ I said, ‘what?’

He said ‘I really need to do this, I need to take some photos of you naked.’

We discussed this for a while.

I said, ‘okay, alright’.

So we went in the dressing room, and I took off all my clothes, buck naked. Locked the door of course.

And he told me how to pose.

He said, ‘put your hands over your genitals,’ which I was glad to do, ‘Bend over like this, and look into the camera in a state of shock,’ - which was not difficult at that time.

So I bent over and I looked, like that, and he took some photos of me naked. Okay, no problem. Um. I got dressed, we did the show.

It was Christmas time, he gave me a gift. The gift was about this large, I have it, and the gift, I’ll describe it to you, it’s difficult, it’s made of some of Bert’s toys. It was a wall hanging, sculpture kinda thing, about this big. And it was a head of Bert, and Bert’s arms are holding a ledge, and on the ledge are about a dozen little Berts, tiny Berts that you can buy in the store at that time, about an inch and a half high , and you could turn them in different direction, looking over there, looking over there, and you could turn them back to look at the Big Bert’s head while the Big Bert was looking down at the Little Berts. And on that ledge underneath the Berts, were faces, photographs that Jim had obviously taken of many of the workshop people who were responsible in the making of Bert, and certainly all of which were responsible in the making of The Muppets. And they were all looking up to camera, and their little faces were tiny , about that big, all along the top of the ledge.

On the edge of this wooden ledge, Jim had painted layers, these striations, which were I gathered like layers of Bert’s mind. Layers of Bert’s soul. By the way I do Bert to Jim’s Ernie. And within those layers, the striations, he’d painted textures, beautiful little textures.

And then, I noticed, Bert’s eyes, the large Bert, Bert’s eyes, the pupils were cut out.

And you look inside Bert’s brain, and there I am naked, looking like this.

I knew he had a good reason.

I say that, to share that with you ... oh by the way, he titled that ‘Bert in Self Contemplation’. I share it with you because so much of Jim is in that gift. The detail that he loved so much - Persian rugs and trees and the like - the details in the layers, the textures in which he had so much fun. I’d just see him hunched over all gleeful, doing this.

I could just see him cutting all those photo out so he doesn’t cut the ears or the noses off of people, he pasted them on himself. And the generosity of time in order to do this when he was so busy.

The generosity of taking the time to do it.

And not only the giving of the gift, but the anticipation of giving. I can’t tell you so many times Jim would say to me, ‘Oh I can’t wait to give this gift to Janie, or Brian or David, or whoever. The anticipation of giving was so wonderful with Jim. And the complexity of that gift, Bert looking at himself, me inside, the little Berts looking at the people around, the complexity, inwardness of that. And the simplicity of the concept was also Jim. And the quality of the gift, and the craftsmanship, and it all speaks so much of Jim, that gift. And I think the love ... I think that’s when I knew ...  he loved me and I loved him.

For Whitney Houston: 'So what becomes of OUR broken hearts?', by Kevin Costner - 2012

18 February 2012, New Hope Baptists Church, Newark, New jersey, USA

This feels right. I'd like to thank Cissy and Dionne for the honor of being here, for everybody in the church treating my wife and I so gracefully. I'll say some stories, maybe some of them you know, maybe some of them you don't. I wrote them down because I didn't want to - I didn't want to miss anything.

A song 'I Will Always Love You' almost wasn't. It wasn't supposed to be in the movie. The first choice was going to be 'What Becomes of a Broken Heart,' but it had been out the year before in another movie and we felt it wouldn't have the impact, and so we couldn't use it.

So what becomes of OUR broken hearts? Whitney returns home today to the place where it all began, and I urge us all, inside and outside, across the nation and around the world to dry our tears, suspend our sorrow - and perhaps our anger - just long enough, just long enough to remember the sweet miracle of Whitney.

Never forgetting that Cissy and Bobbi Kristina are sitting among us. Your mother and I had a lot in common. I know many at this moment are thinking, 'Really? She's a girl, you're a boy. You're white. She's black. We heard you like to sing, but our sister could really sing.'

So what am I talking about? Kevin Costner and Whitney Houston, they don't have anything in common at all. Well, you'd be wrong about that. We both grew up in the Baptist church. [applause]

It wasn't as big as this. My grandmother played the piano, and she led the choir, and her two daughters, my mom and my aunt both sang in it. The rest of my family, uncles, aunts and cousins, sat every Sunday out front and watched. My earliest memories are tied to that old church in Paramount. I remember seeing a gold shovel going into the ground and people praying about it and thinking, 'Wow, something big was going to go here,' and I watched my father and the rest of the men build it from the ground up. I was probably 4 years old and seemed to be always in the way. I wanted to help. I wanted to be in on the action. One of the men snapped down a red line where the choir would be standing one day and said, 'Have at it,' as many nails as you want all in this line.

I always took great comfort in watching my mom and aunt sing, knowing that they would never fall through that floor where I had worked!

The church was the center of our social life and Whitney and I would laugh, knowing it was also the place where we could really get into big trouble, especially when you were allowed to sit with your friends and not your parents in the big church. I remember more than once being pulled from the pew for whispering and passing notes. I don't believe my feet ever hit the floor as my father hauled me outside in front of everyone. I believed even the preacher prayed for me.

Whitney's favorite story of mine was me sneaking into the church kitchen after communion. I liked the little glasses of grape juice that were left over. I liked how they felt in my hand. I couldn't have been over 6 at the time, but I would lean against the table and one by one I would knock them back. Having some near conversation with someone my father would find me and ask me what I was doing. I told him I was a cowboy and I was drinking whiskey. I don't think my feet touched the floor that day, either! [applause]

It was easy for us to laugh. The church was what we knew. It was our private bond. I can see her in my own mind running around here as a skinny little girl knowing everyone, everyone's business, knowing every inch of this place. I can also see her in trouble, too. Trying to use that beautiful smile, trying to talk her way out of it, and Cissy and not having any of it.

Mostly the days of church were good ones for us and we both remembered how our parents tried to explain God and the plan He had for our lives, and we agreed that there was this feeling, this promise that if somehow we listened carefully, God's voice would somehow come to us. I told Whitney that I always worried God was going to ask me to be a preacher. I wasn't sure how much fun ours had. Whitney told me she wasn't worried at all. She wasn't going to wait for a whisper. She was going to be like her cousin Dionne and her beautiful mother Cissy.

There is no doubt that she has joined their ranks and as the debate heats up this century and it surely will, about the greatest singer of the last century, as the lists are drawn, it they will have little meaning to me if her name is not on it. [applause]

But as sure I am in Whitney's place in musical history, from the first time she took center stage here as a teenager, flushed with the excitement that she had exceeded everyone's expectations and awesome promise of what was to come. It's still needing to hear from her mother about how she was received. Was she good enough? Could I have done better? Did they really like me? Or are they just being polite because they were scared of you, Cissy? These are the private questions that Whitney would always have that would always follow her.

At the height of her fame as a singer I asked her to be my co-star in a movie called 'The Bodyguard.' I thought she was the perfect choice, but the red flags came out immediately. 'Maybe I should think this over a bit.' I was reminded that this would be her first acting role. 'We could also think about another singer,' was a suggestion. Maybe somebody white. Nobody ever said it out loud, but it was a fair question, it was. There would be a lot riding on this - maybe a more experienced person was the way to go. It was clear, I needed to think about this.

I told everyone that I had taken notice that Whitney was black. The only problem was, I thought she was perfect for what we were trying to do. There was a bit of a relief in the room when we found out that Whitney was going to be on tour and she wouldn't be available for our movie. The anxiety came right back when I said we should postpone and wait a year. [applause]

That was a lot for the studio to accept, and to their credit, they did, but not without a screen test. Whitney would have to earn it. That was the first time I saw the doubt. The doubt creep into her that she would not be handed the part. She would have to be great. The day the test came and I went into her trailer after the hair and makeup people were done, Whitney was scared. Arguably, the biggest pop star in the world wasn't sure if she was good enough.

She didn't think she looked right. There were a thousand things to her that seemed wrong. I held her hand and told her that she looked beautiful. I told her that I would be with her every step of the way, that everyone there wanted her to succeed, but I could still feel the doubt. I wanted to tell her that the game was rigged. That I didn't care how the test went, that she could fall down and start speaking in tongues, that somehow I would find a way to explain it as an extraordinary acting choice. [applause] and we could expect more to follow, and gee, weren't we lucky to have her? That wouldn't have been fair. It wouldn't have been fair to Lawrence Kasden who had written the screenplay 15 years earlier. It wouldn't have been fair to my brothers at Warner Brothers and it wasn't the right signal to send to Whitney.

She took it all in and asked me if she could have a few minutes by herself and would meet me on the set. I was sure she was praying. After about 20 minutes later she came out. We hadn't said four lines when we had to stop. The lights were turned off, and I walked Whitney off the set and back to her room. She wanted to know what was wrong, and I needed to know what she'd done during those 20 minutes. She said, "Nothing," in only the way she could, 'Nothing.' So I turned her around so that she could see herself in the mirror and she gasped. All of the makeup on Whitney's face was running. It was streaking down her face and she was devastated. She didn't feel like the makeup we put on her was enough so she'd wiped it off and put on the makeup that she was used to wearing in her music videos. It was much thicker and the hot lights had melted it! She asked if anyone had seen - if anyone had saw, I said I didn't think so. It happened so quick.

She seemed so small and sad at that moment, and I asked her why she did it? She said, 'I just wanted to look my best.' It's a tree we can all hang from. Unexplainable burden that comes with fame, call it doubt, call it fear. I've had mine, and I know the famous in the room have had theirs. I asked her to trust me and she said she would. A half-hour later, she went back in to do her screen test and the studio fell in love with her. The Whitney I knew, despite her success and worldwide fame, still wondered am I good enough? Am I pretty enough? Will they like me? It was the burden that made her great, and the part that caused her to stumble in the end.

Whitney, if you could hear me now, I would tell you, you weren't just good enough, you were great. You sang the whole damn song without a band. You made the picture what it was. A lot of leading men could have played my part. A lot of guys - a lot of guys could have filled that role, but you, Whitney, I truly believe were the only one that could have played Rachel Mirren at that time. [applause]

You weren't just pretty, you were as beautiful as a woman could be. People didn't just like you, Whitney. They loved you. I was your pretend bodyguard once not so long ago, and now you're gone, too soon, leaving us with memories - memories of a little girl that stepped bravely in front of this church, in front of the ones that loved you first. In front of the ones that loved you best and loved you the longest. The bolder you stepped into the white-hot light of the world stage, and what you did is the rarest of achievements.

You set the bar so high that professional singers, your own colleagues, they don't want to sing that little country song. What would be the point? Now, the only ones who sings your songs are young girls like you, who are dreaming of being you some day. And so to you, Bobbi Kristina and to all those young girls who are dreaming that dream, that maybe thinking, are they good enough? I think Whitney would tell you, 'Guard your bodies, guard the precious miracle of your own life, and then sing your hearts out,' knowing that there's a lady in heaven who is making God himself wonder how he created something so perfect.

So off you go, Whitney, off you go. Escorted by an army of angels to your heavenly father, and when you sing before him, don't worry . . . you'll be good enough.

For Steve Jobs: 'Steve always aspired to make beautiful later', by sister Mona Simpson - 2011

16 October 2011, Memorial Church of Stanford University, San Francisco, USA

There is no audio or video of this speech

I grew up as an only child, with a single mother. Because we were poor and because I knew my father had emigrated from Syria, I imagined he looked like Omar Sharif. I hoped he would be rich and kind and would come into our lives (and our not yet furnished apartment) and help us. Later, after I’d met my father, I tried to believe he’d changed his number and left no forwarding address because he was an idealistic revolutionary, plotting a new world for the Arab people.

Even as a feminist, my whole life I’d been waiting for a man to love, who could love me. For decades, I’d thought that man would be my father. When I was 25, I met that man and he was my brother.

By then, I lived in New York, where I was trying to write my first novel. I had a job at a small magazine in an office the size of a closet, with three other aspiring writers. When one day a lawyer called me – me, the middle-class girl from California who hassled the boss to buy us health insurance – and said his client was rich and famous and was my long-lost brother, the young editors went wild. This was 1985 and we worked at a cutting-edge literary magazine, but I’d fallen into the plot of a Dickens novel and really, we all loved those best. The lawyer refused to tell me my brother’s name and my colleagues started a betting pool. The leading candidate: John Travolta. I secretly hoped for a literary descendant of Henry James – someone more talented than I, someone brilliant without even trying.

When I met Steve, he was a guy my age in jeans, Arab- or Jewish-looking and handsomer than Omar Sharif.

We took a long walk – something, it happened, that we both liked to do. I don’t remember much of what we said that first day, only that he felt like someone I’d pick to be a friend. He explained that he worked in computers.

I didn’t know much about computers. I still worked on a manual Olivetti typewriter.
I told Steve I’d recently considered my first purchase of a computer: something called the Cromemco.

Steve told me it was a good thing I’d waited. He said he was making something that was going to be insanely beautiful.

I want to tell you a few things I learned from Steve, during three distinct periods, over the 27 years I knew him. They’re not periods of years, but of states of being. His full life. His illness. His dying.

Steve worked at what he loved. He worked really hard. Every day.

That’s incredibly simple, but true.

He was the opposite of absent-minded.

He was never embarrassed about working hard, even if the results were failures. If someone as smart as Steve wasn’t ashamed to admit trying, maybe I didn’t have to be.

When he got kicked out of Apple, things were painful. He told me about a dinner at which 500 Silicon Valley leaders met the then-sitting president. Steve hadn’t been invited.

He was hurt but he still went to work at Next. Every single day.

Novelty was not Steve’s highest value. Beauty was.

For an innovator, Steve was remarkably loyal. If he loved a shirt, he’d order 10 or 100 of them. In the Palo Alto house, there are probably enough black cotton turtlenecks for everyone in this church.

He didn’t favor trends or gimmicks. He liked people his own age.

His philosophy of aesthetics reminds me of a quote that went something like this: “Fashion is what seems beautiful now but looks ugly later; art can be ugly at first but it becomes beautiful later.”

Steve always aspired to make beautiful later.

He was willing to be misunderstood.

Uninvited to the ball, he drove the third or fourth iteration of his same black sports car to Next, where he and his team were quietly inventing the platform on which Tim Berners-Lee would write the program for the World Wide Web.

Steve was like a girl in the amount of time he spent talking about love. Love was his supreme virtue, his god of gods. He tracked and worried about the romantic lives of the people working with him.

Whenever he saw a man he thought a woman might find dashing, he called out, “Hey are you single? Do you wanna come to dinner with my sister?”

I remember when he phoned the day he met Laurene. “There’s this beautiful woman and she’s really smart and she has this dog and I’m going to marry her.”

When Reed was born, he began gushing and never stopped. He was a physical dad, with each of his children. He fretted over Lisa’s boyfriends and Erin’s travel and skirt lengths and Eve’s safety around the horses she adored.

None of us who attended Reed’s graduation party will ever forget the scene of Reed and Steve slow dancing.

His abiding love for Laurene sustained him. He believed that love happened all the time, everywhere. In that most important way, Steve was never ironic, never cynical, never pessimistic. I try to learn from that, still.

Steve had been successful at a young age, and he felt that had isolated him. Most of the choices he made from the time I knew him were designed to dissolve the walls around him. A middle-class boy from Los Altos, he fell in love with a middle-class girl from New Jersey. It was important to both of them to raise Lisa, Reed, Erin and Eve as grounded, normal children. Their house didn’t intimidate with art or polish; in fact, for many of the first years I knew Steve and Lo together, dinner was served on the grass, and sometimes consisted of just one vegetable. Lots of that one vegetable. But one. Broccoli. In season. Simply prepared. With just the right, recently snipped, herb.

Even as a young millionaire, Steve always picked me up at the airport. He’d be standing there in his jeans. When a family member called him at work, his secretary Linetta answered, “Your dad’s in a meeting. Would you like me to interrupt him?”

When Reed insisted on dressing up as a witch every Halloween, Steve, Laurene, Erin and Eve all went wiccan.

They once embarked on a kitchen remodel; it took years. They cooked on a hotplate in the garage. The Pixar building, under construction during the same period, finished in half the time. And that was it for the Palo Alto house. The bathrooms stayed old. But – and this was a crucial distinction – it had been a great house to start with; Steve saw to that.

This is not to say that he didn’t enjoy his success: he enjoyed his success a lot, just minus a few zeros. He told me how much he loved going to the Palo Alto bike store and gleefully realizing he could afford to buy the best bike there.

And he did.

Steve was humble. Steve liked to keep learning.

Once, he told me if he’d grown up differently, he might have become a mathematician. He spoke reverently about colleges and loved walking around the Stanford campus. In the last year of his life, he studied a book of paintings by Mark Rothko, an artist he hadn’t known about before, thinking of what could inspire people on the walls of a future Apple campus.

Steve cultivated whimsy. What other C.E.O. knows the history of English and Chinese tea roses and has a favorite David Austin rose?

He had surprises tucked in all his pockets. I’ll venture that Laurene will discover treats – songs he loved, a poem he cut out and put in a drawer – even after 20 years of an exceptionally close marriage. I spoke to him every other day or so, but when I opened The New York Times and saw a feature on the company’s patents, I was still surprised and delighted to see a sketch for a perfect staircase.

With his four children, with his wife, with all of us, Steve had a lot of fun.

He treasured happiness.

Then, Steve became ill and we watched his life compress into a smaller circle. Once, he’d loved walking through Paris. He’d discovered a small handmade soba shop in Kyoto. He downhill skied gracefully. He cross-country skied clumsily. No more.

Eventually, even ordinary pleasures, like a good peach, no longer appealed to him.

Yet, what amazed me, and what I learned from his illness, was how much was still left after so much had been taken away.

I remember my brother learning to walk again, with a chair. After his liver transplant, once a day he would get up on legs that seemed too thin to bear him, arms pitched to the chair back. He’d push that chair down the Memphis hospital corridor towards the nursing station and then he’d sit down on the chair, rest, turn around and walk back again. He counted his steps and, each day, pressed a little farther.

Laurene got down on her knees and looked into his eyes.

“You can do this, Steve,” she said. His eyes widened. His lips pressed into each other.
He tried. He always, always tried, and always with love at the core of that effort. He was an intensely emotional man.

I realized during that terrifying time that Steve was not enduring the pain for himself. He set destinations: his son Reed’s graduation from high school, his daughter Erin’s trip to Kyoto, the launching of a boat he was building on which he planned to take his family around the world and where he hoped he and Laurene would someday retire.

Even ill, his taste, his discrimination and his judgment held. He went through 67 nurses before finding kindred spirits and then he completely trusted the three who stayed with him to the end. Tracy. Arturo. Elham.

One time when Steve had contracted a tenacious pneumonia his doctor forbid everything – even ice. We were in a standard I.C.U. unit. Steve, who generally disliked cutting in line or dropping his own name, confessed that this once, he’d like to be treated a little specially.

I told him: Steve, this is special treatment.

He leaned over to me, and said: “I want it to be a little more special.”

Intubated, when he couldn’t talk, he asked for a notepad. He sketched devices to hold an iPad in a hospital bed. He designed new fluid monitors and x-ray equipment. He redrew that not-quite-special-enough hospital unit. And every time his wife walked into the room, I watched his smile remake itself on his face.
For the really big, big things, you have to trust me, he wrote on his sketchpad. He looked up. You have to.

By that, he meant that we should disobey the doctors and give him a piece of ice.

None of us knows for certain how long we’ll be here. On Steve’s better days, even in the last year, he embarked upon projects and elicited promises from his friends at Apple to finish them. Some boat builders in the Netherlands have a gorgeous stainless steel hull ready to be covered with the finishing wood. His three daughters remain unmarried, his two youngest still girls, and he’d wanted to walk them down the aisle as he’d walked me the day of my wedding.

We all – in the end – die in medias res. In the middle of a story. Of many stories.

I suppose it’s not quite accurate to call the death of someone who lived with cancer for years unexpected, but Steve’s death was unexpected for us.

What I learned from my brother’s death was that character is essential: What he was, was how he died. Tuesday morning, he called me to ask me to hurry up to Palo Alto. His tone was affectionate, dear, loving, but like someone whose luggage was already strapped onto the vehicle, who was already on the beginning of his journey, even as he was sorry, truly deeply sorry, to be leaving us.

He started his farewell and I stopped him. I said, “Wait. I’m coming. I’m in a taxi to the airport. I’ll be there.”

“I’m telling you now because I’m afraid you won’t make it on time, honey.”

When I arrived, he and his Laurene were joking together like partners who’d lived and worked together every day of their lives. He looked into his children’s eyes as if he couldn’t unlock his gaze.

Until about 2 in the afternoon, his wife could rouse him, to talk to his friends from Apple.

Then, after awhile, it was clear that he would no longer wake to us.

His breathing changed. It became severe, deliberate, purposeful. I could feel him counting his steps again, pushing farther than before.

This is what I learned: he was working at this, too. Death didn’t happen to Steve, he achieved it.

He told me, when he was saying goodbye and telling me he was sorry, so sorry we wouldn’t be able to be old together as we’d always planned, that he was going to a better place.

Dr. Fischer gave him a 50/50 chance of making it through the night.

He made it through the night, Laurene next to him on the bed sometimes jerked up when there was a longer pause between his breaths. She and I looked at each other, then he would heave a deep breath and begin again.

This had to be done. Even now, he had a stern, still handsome profile, the profile of an absolutist, a romantic. His breath indicated an arduous journey, some steep path, altitude.

He seemed to be climbing.

But with that will, that work ethic, that strength, there was also sweet Steve’s capacity for wonderment, the artist’s belief in the ideal, the still more beautiful later.

Steve’s final words, hours earlier, were monosyllables, repeated three times.

Before embarking, he’d looked at his sister Patty, then for a long time at his children, then at his life’s partner, Laurene, and then over their shoulders past them.

Steve’s final words were:
OH WOW. OH WOW. OH WOW.

For Kurt Cobain: 'Just catch the groove and let it flow out of your heart', by Krist Novoselic - 1994

10 April 1994, Seatte Center, Seattle, Washington, USA

On behalf of Dave, Pat, and I, I would like to thank you all for your concern at this time. We remember Kurt for what he was: caring, generous, and sweet. Let's keep the music with us. We'll always have it... Forever. Kurt had an ethic towards his fans that was rooted in the punk rock way of thinking. No band is special, no player royalty. But if you've got a guitar and a lot of soul just bang something out and mean it. You're the superstar. Plugged in the tones and rhythms that are uniquely and universally human: music. Heck... use your guitar as a drum, just catch the groove and let it flow out of your heart. That's the level Kurt spoke to us on: in our hearts, and that's where he, and the music, will always be, forever.
 

For Kurt Cobain : 'He's such an asshole', by Courtney Love - 1994

10 April 1994, Seattle Center, Seattle, Washington, USA

I don't know what to say. I feel the same way you guys do. If you guys don't think... that I used to sit in this room, when he played the guitar and sang, and feel so honored to be near him, you're crazy... Anyway, he left a note, it's more like a letter to the fucking editor. I don't know what happened. I mean it was gonna happen, but it could've happened when he was 40. He always said he was gonna outlive everybody and be a hundred and twenty. I'm not gonna read you all the note 'cause it's none of the rest of your fucking business. But some of it is to you. I don't really think it takes away his dignity to read this considering that it's addressed to most of you. He's such an asshole. I want you all to say "asshole" really loud.

[crowd: "asshole"]

This note should be pretty easy to understand. All the warnings from the punk rock 101 courses over the years since my first introduction to the, shall we say, ethics involved with independence and embracement of your community, has proven to be very true. I haven't felt the excitement of listening to, as well as creating music, along with really writing something, for too many years now. I feel guilty beyond words about these things - for example, when we're backstage and the lights go out and the roar of the crowd begins, it doesn't affect me the way in which it did for Freddie Mercury, who seemed to love and relish the love and adoration of the crowd.

Well, Kurt, so fucking what - then don't be a rock star you asshole.

Which is something I totally admire and envy. The fact, I can't fool you, any one of you, it simply isn't fair to you or to me. The worst crime I could think of would be to put people off by faking it, pretending as if I'm having 100% fun.

No Kurt, the worst crime I can think of is for you to just continue being a rock star when you fucking hate it, just fucking stop.

Sometimes I feel as I should have a punch-in time clock before I walk out on stage. I've tried everything within my power to appreciate it, and I do, God believe me, I do. But it's not enough. I appreciate the fact that I and we have affected and entertained a lot of people. I must be one of those narcissists who only appreciate things when they're alone. I'm too sensitive. Oh, I need to be slightly numb in order to regain the enthusiasm I once had as a child. On our last three tours I've had a much better appreciation of all the people I've known personally, and of fans of our music. But I still can't get out the frustration, the guilt and the empathy I have for everybody. There's good in all of us and I simply love people too much.

So why didn't you just fucking stay?

So much that it makes me feel too fucking sad. Sad little sensitive unappreciative Pisces, Jesus, Man...

Oh shut up, bastard. Why didn't you just enjoy it? I don't know. Then he goes on to say personal things to me that are none of your damn business; personal things to Frances that are none of your damn business.

I had a good marriage, and for that I'm grateful. But since the age of seven, I've become hateful toward all humans in general. Only because it seems so easy for people to get along and have empathy.

Empathy?

Only because I love and feel for people too much I guess Thank you all from the pit of my burning nauseous stomach for your letters and concern during the last years. I'm too much of an erratic, moody person and I don't have the passion anymore. So remember...

And don't remember this, cause this is a fucking lie!

It's better to burn out than to fade away.

God! You asshole.

Peace, Love, Empathy. Kurt Cobain.

And then there are some more personal things that is none of your damn business. And just remember: this is all bullshit... But I want you to know one thing: that '80s tough luck bullshit, it doesn't work. It's not real. It doesn't work. I should have let him – we all should have let him – have his numbness. We should have let him have the thing that made him feel better, that made his stomach feel better. We should have let him have it, instead of trying to strip away his skin.

You go home and you tell your parents, "Don't you ever try that tough love bullshit on me, 'cuz it doesn't fucking work." That's what I think.

And I'm laying in our bed, and I'm really sorry. And I feel the same way you do. I'm really sorry you guys. I don't know what I could have done. I wish I'd been here. I wish I hadn't listened to other people, but I did.

Every night I've been sleeping with his mother, and I wake up in the morning and think it's him because their bodies are sort of the same.

And I have to go now. Just tell him he's a fucker, OK? Just say "fucker." "You're a fucker." And that you love him.

for Bob Ellis: 'Oh, how I will miss Bob’s one-sentence emails – and his three page emails', by Bill Shorten - 2016

9 April 2016, Sydney, Australia

There is no available video or audio of this speech.

We gather today – family, friends, comrades, readers, actors, correspondents and co-authors - in celebration of a man who wrung every last drop from life.

Who drained his overflowing cup to its very dregs.

Last Sunday, in the hours after Anne gave Chloe and I the sad news and the spontaneous Labor telephone tree spread the bad news – Bob Ellis is gone…

I don’t know how others reacted, but I went to my bookshelves and I pulled out some of Bob’s books, including my prized first edition of Goodbye Jerusalem, to revisit his words.

I turned on my computer and re-read the hundreds of personal emails Bob had sent me.

And I realised the marvellous flow of Bob Ellis was ended.

And what a terrible loss this would be, not just for those who knew and loved him, but all those now denied a chance to get to know him.

So today, I stand before you as the leader of the Labor party Bob loved, the Labor party to which he returned the phrase ‘true believers’.

And more importantly I stand here as a friend who will miss him very much.

To Bob’s incredibly talented, loving wife Annie – and to your children – I offer the sympathies of our Labor family, in your loss.

To all the members of Bob’s remarkable family that he loved so much, thank you for sharing him with the rest of us.

Oh, how I will miss Bob’s one-sentence emails – and his three page emails.

Sometimes sent miraculously seconds after a press conference or a parliamentary debate.

I will miss his unflinching support and loyalty.

I will miss his advice – but also his ability to listen – to lend an ear and share what he called ‘night thoughts’.

I will miss his unerring knack for saying something wickedly, shamefully, brilliantly, impossibly rude about our opponents – past and present. 

In fact, if I had a dollar for every killer line Bob had sent me over my years in politics, I’d almost be able to afford the legal costs of using them.

On days such as today, we inevitably ponder the road less travelled.

And I must say, from time to time when Bob sent through something particularly, scandalously unprintable by way of helpful suggestion.

I would think to myself…imagine if he had won the Mackellar by-election in 1994.

Imagine what Bob Ellis would have done with parliamentary privilege!

Pages and pages of beautiful words have been written about Bob this past week.

I think he would have thoroughly approved of the effort and energy spent by people like Guy Rundle, David Marr and Mike Rann – among others – on finding just the right phrase to capture the genius of Ellis.

For prose was Bob’s greatest gift – and a truly unique one.

Words will be his enduring legacy.

Not words gathering dust down in the library stacks.

But in battered copies of The Things we did Last Summer, taken down from beach-house shelves, or unearthed in hostel lobbies.

Still gripping the reader anew, with their unflinching honesty, their arresting character sketches.

Above all the sense of immediacy and urgency, the feeling that enterprises of great moment were buffeting the narrator through history, live.

In an age when political rhetoric and political writing can be seen as an exercise in paint-by-numbers, Bob was no mere wordsmith.

Not for him the hammer and anvil, beating clichés and weasel words into the blunt, dullness that blights so many political statements and corporate manuals and recorded messages.

There was nothing mechanical, nothing predictable, nothing rigid or repetitive about Bob.

He put his shambolic, contrary, discursive and brilliant self on the page – in style and in substance.

The Ellis mode is easy to imitate…

The long run-on sentence, sluggishly setting out towards its subject like a sleeper train through a country station late at night; semicolons spacing out the melancholy burden of change and decay;  sub-clauses like skiffs beating back the current on a slow-flowing river, before enlivened, alarmed, enraged, the languid water surges and – leaping over the falls – ends. 

Or perhaps you disagree?

Because with Bob, there was always the hook.

The psychological snare he’d planted three paragraphs up the page.

And just as you strode through the scrub, convinced you had his argument safely in hand, the Ellis rope drew tight around your ankle, and turned your world upside down.

As supple and smooth as his prose could be – there was always a hard edge of thoughtfulness. 

Guy Rundle called it Australian but not Antipodean.

And there’s something to that.

The honesty, the irreverence, the sense of a generation making a go of it here in a big country full of small towns.

Breaking free from dull nights on bleak streets cut off from the wider world.

Overturning fustiness and convention, British accents reading the ABC news before Homicide, a lean diet of the cultural cringe and two-dimensional identity.

Striking out in search of a new voice and new ideas.

The voice of a genuinely Australian social democracy shaped by ideas and ideals.

The new sense that Australia’s own time was coming, at last.

We might try, today - and in classrooms and lecture theatres for years to come - to examine the various component parts of Bob’s work – but he was far greater than the sum of them.

To say Bob had a way with words is like saying Les Murray is handy with a limerick or Cate Blanchett has excellent diction.

Like his remarkable life, no mere analysis can do Bob or his words justice.

For me then, the best way to farewell my friend Bob is in his own words.

And so it goes, at funerals he wrote 17 years ago:

“It’s a question of words in the end – how well we say I’ve loved you all my life, or it’s good to have been your friend.

And how well in the church we say the words and sing the songs that end the tale of a particular soul’s trajectory through a particular time on earth.

Words that say thank you adequately, so long, it’s been a privilege.”

Rest in peace, Digger.

for Stella Young: 'That girl was on a rocket to the moon', by Nelly Thomas - 2014

19 December 2014, Melbourne Town Hall, Melbourne, Australia

So, comedians… giving eulogies.

If there’s one thing Stella and I agreed on, it’s that the job of the comedian, like the court jester before us, is to speak the truth.

If people laugh, you’re lucky.

Here goes.

I know what I’m supposed to say.

That I’m ok and we were lucky to have had her and everyone is special and we’re all irreplaceable.

But that’s crap.

The truth is, I don’t feel lucky.

I feel robbed.

And it’s impolite to say, but many humans are pretty unremarkable.

There are literally billions of us on the planet and most of us are a dime a dozen.

But you, my darling Stella, were one of a kind.

Firstly to Stella’s family.

I can only say sorry. Your loss is the most devastating.

No one can create a human like Stella without being an exceptional family. Exceptional parents, exceptional sisters.

Thank you for sharing her with us.

To her friends

What a beautiful, true friend Stella was.

The day after her death my two-year-old daughter looked at me and asked, “Where’s My Stella?” Two years old! One thing I’ve realised this week is that we all thought she was our Stella. That’s because she loved so large.

To her beloved crip community.

She loved you. Oh, how she loved and adored you and spoke about your community like it was a warm blanket that embraced her at every turn.

She was yours and you where hers.

To her ABC, Channel 31, Melbourne Museum, Comedy Festival, comedian, writer and other work friends. We have lost a creative giant.

A pocket-sized giant that filled every room she was in, every stage.

To the activist communities – disability, education, preventing violence against women, youth – we’ve lost a foghorn. A true agent of real change.

Who else but Stella could cut through the BS with a single sentence?

On organised religion:

“I lost faith in god the day I found out there was a stairway to heaven.”

On euthanasia:

“I’m not interested in talking about dignity in death until we all have dignity in life.”

On the apolitical – and currently in vogue – so-called positive psychology movement:

“No amount of smiling at a flight of stairs will turn it into a ramp”.

Who else but Stella could sit with those – sometimes on national television – who believe that people with disabilities should be grateful because, “Things are pretty good in Australia” and who, at the extreme end, think people with disabilities should not exist?

What puny minds!

What highly educated, well read, well-argued, well-researched and puny minds.

If you can’t see the hole – the size of Uluru – just one small cripple in red high heals and some leather pants has left today, then you cannot see anything worth seeing.

And you must not be listened to.

As most of you know, one of the many wonderful things Stella left behind was a letter to her eighty year old self

I am not ready to live in a world where Stella Young doesn’t live to at least eighty, so I’ve chosen to imagine the rest. Go with me.

Next year, as planned, we take her debut solo comedy show on a national tour, starting in Stawell (of course) and ending at the Opera House.

The entire tour is sold out and her reviews are glowing.

One idiot reviewer describes her as “brave” but she rolls her eyes and says, “I tell you what’s brave – dealing with dickheads like you.” At the after party, Stel runs into seventeen gay Qantas hosties she met on the trip up. Why seventeen? I have no idea; but when Stel’s around, gay men magically reproduce themselves. Like a camp kind of compound interest.

They take her to a hot new club. It has a “fabulous basement darling” but they don’t notice that the stairs are a “bit of a problem for Stelz”. Stella grabs a lesbian leaving the club – knowing she’ll know all the accessible venues within a 100km radius (it’s in the handbook) – and they head off to the “Honey Pot”. Bryce and Adam are there.

They’re always there for Stella.

They have a few drinks, party well into the morning and during a particularly vigorous dance session to “Wrecking Ball” Stella is mid way through a pash with Ruby Rose when she falls out of her chair and breaks a few ribs.

Again.

Adam and Bryce take her to the hospital.

Moments later (it’s imaginary) a surgeon walks in. He’s short, squat, and devastatingly handsome. He takes a look at Miss Young and concludes that he’ll need to see her many, many times again.

On day three he proposes marriage.

She says no, “But if you’ll move to Melbourne I’ll consider dating you”.

He does.

Eventually he gives up his surgical career and becomes Stella’s publicist.

(You know, finally does something useful with his life).

The next year we take Crip Tales to London.

Stella is the toast of the town.

One night I notice Dawn French in the audience, the other Kim and Kanye.

Stephen Frye comes a couple of times but it’s when Amy Phoeler rocks up to a Saturday matinee that Stella gets really excited.

Amy wants to chat to Stella after the show, but the crip mafia are forming a crop circle with their chairs and no one gets past that shit.

It’s ok, Amy calls the next day.

She wants to set up a US tour for Stella.

Jay-Z and Beyoncé bankroll it and Stella buys a Rolls and a driver.

By coincidence, the driver is Crazy Eyes from Orange is the New Black.

Just because.

They become BFF’s.

Hilary Clinton comes and says if she’s ever President, she’ll make Stella the Disability Commissioner of the Universe. Stella accepts in advance, but only if she can do an accessibility audit of every building everywhere, ever built.

Hilary says, “No worries.”

Stella returns to Oz and, frankly, has become a bit up herself.

The hot surgeon has started to complain about always playing second fiddle and wants her pull back her career and focus on him. She tells him where the nearest accessible exit is.

Stel goes on to tour nationally and internationally for many years.

She makes sitcoms.

Feature films.

She writes books.

She becomes a regular on Sesame Street.

In 2020 Stella is announced as Australian of the Year.

In 2022 she starts a new Political Party called The Borgen and becomes Australia’s first President.

By 2035 everyone has seen how well she’s done with Australia and she’s running the world!

Carpenters and bricklayers from all the lands rejoice!

All public buildings in the world are made accessible!

If they can’t be made accessible they’re knocked down and rebuilt!

When some heritage ning-nong argues the old buildings should be kept for “history”, Stella reminds him that the human right to access is more important than the human right to nostalgia.

On that note, all the cobblestones in the world are also crushed up and made into garden gnomes!

The Paralympics now includes Wheelchair Synchronised swimming!

Everyone – able bodied or not – has access to hovercraft wheelchairs!

(Of course, they’re solar powered – Stella believed in radical ideas like a round earth and climate change).

Dancing at any opportunity is mandatory!

Women with disabilities are no longer the group most at risk of Family Violence!

There is no family violence!

Full gender equality has been achieved!

Those very few men caught still committing this crime are sent to a gnome factory on Christmas Island to crush the old cobblestones.

And, in a nice twist, all the refugees, are sent to Stella’s beloved South Yarra.

Under Stella’s presidency the ideologies of individualism, neo-liberalism and conservatism die a quick and painless death.

Along with Dr Phil.

These ideologies tell people who face challenges that it is them who are sick rather than the society they live in.

Stella says No.

All Australia number-plates now say:

“Affirmative Action. Not affirmations.”

All mothers and fathers talk to their kids about healthy and equal relationships.

Like Stel’s mum, this happens anywhere from home to work to Coles fruit and veg.

“You know Stel, if you did every possible thing you could think of with another person’s body, you’d never get anything done!”

“I know mum!!!!!”

Diversity audits are mandatory in all workplaces!

RampUp is reinstated.

As is funding for Community TV.

By the way, if you really want to honour Stella’s legacy today you won’t eulogise her endlessly. You’ll do something about it.

On that note, I have to say, Stella would be most bemused, amused and confused by some of the people who’ve been eulogising her over the past week.

With some, she’d be downright ticked off.

It would be inappropriate for me to name names here…

But suffice to say, I’m not going to Pyne over it.

Ironically for such a brilliant wordsmith, words were not enough for Stella Young.

She demanded action. When you leave here today do an access audit on your workplace, a diversity audit, a gender audit. How about you start with asking, “Can everyone get in the building?” and go from there.

Finally, be proud. Really.

Stella’s favourite line was “You get proud by practicing.”

It was tattooed on her arm.

If you loved Stella, you’ll practice pride every single day:

The crips

The queers

The mentals

The fatsos

The weirdos

The refos

The blacks

The browns

The pink and

The purple polka dotted

PRIDE. TAKES. PRACTICE.

Especially if you’re on the margins.

Practice it daily.

By the time Stella dies, at the age of 85, she is our most famous Australian. Ever.

She leaves world a better, brighter, fairer and far more beautiful place.

And, by the way, if you think I’m joking about the most famous Australian ever part, you are wrong. That girl was on a rocket to the moon. She was going there very fast and I have absolutely no doubt that she was about to explode globally.

In the truest sense of the word, she was special.

I know, “Piss off Nelzies!!!”

Stel wherever you are, I will always try to think of you on that rocket – charging around, abusing people who move too fricken slow and ramming into their ankles “accidentally”.

My darling Stella, you were out of this world.

I just so wish you were still in it.

for Stella Young: 'I was worried that my clumsiness would injure her', by Stella Barton - 2014

19 December 2014, Melbourne Town Hall, Melbourne, Australia

Transcript to follow, when available.

For Margaret McGregor: 'Mum wanted this day to be graceful like her', by sons Tim & Rohan McGregor - 2013

16 September 2013, Brighton, Melbourne, Australia

Thank you all for coming today to celebrate the life of my mother. Today is a very difficult day but we must fill it with happy memories and love for a wonderful woman, my mother, Margaret.

My Mum was graceful, eloquent, intelligent, selfless, kind, caring and quick-witted.  On 20 June 2013, Mum wrote down and sent to us, her sons, her wishes, which commenced with:

“I am not afraid for myself. I actually feel strangely calm about it all. I’m just worried about Dad.”

Worried about Dad.  Worried about everyone she loved, rather than herself.  That was Mum. 

When her sister Rosalyn was ill, Mum thought not of her own health challenges but of the need to ensure Rosalyn was surrounded with love.  When her brother Warren was ill, Mum became the family glue to bring us all together and ensure Warren too was surrounded with love.  When her mother was ill, Mum became the family guardian to take the brunt of Gran’s illness and ensure that Gran passed with dignity and love.  Recently, when I accompanied Mum to her medical appointments and certain treatments were suggested, Mum was very clear that it was not an option if there was a possibility of them reducing her capacity to care for Dad.  Such was Mum’s devotion to Dad and such was their bond.  On 17 August, Dad passed away holding Mum’s hand.  When that happened, there is no question that a light went out inside Mum.  Thanks to Bethlehem Hospital, both of these beautiful lives ended with an abundance of love and dignity. 

But our family is devastated by the recent passing of Margaret and Robert.  We take some solace in the precious moments Mum and Dad enjoyed over the past year.

• Kate and I getting married
• Their first grandson Tom arriving and the mutual adoration that quickly developed
• The last few Sunday lunches we enjoyed together at their home with the immediate and extended family
• Calista and Matt’s relationship developing into their recent marriage

Being a mother of four rambunctious boys – with us fighting on the back seat between games of “spotto on the road signs” - Mum had her work cut out and, as a highly-skilled educator, it is little wonder that she adopted a rather authoritarian, teacher-like approach to our home environment.  That had varying success as we each rebelled at various junctures but we all understood that her iron rule came from a place of love and pragmatism.  When we spent six months in 1979 travelling as a family together around England, Scotland and the European continent, Mum regularly received thanks and congratulations from other tourists about the excellent behaviour of her four boys; such tourists being blissfully unaware of the fact that we were all simply petrified of transgressing the daily maternal regulations.

Back then, the softness in Mum was evident in her enjoyment of Andrew Lloyd Webber and Rogers & Hammerstein musicals – the key songs from which she would regularly recite reasonably accurately on her treasured piano organ - and also evident in her adoption of as many feline friends as possible to offset the testosterone overload in our house. 

More recently, Mum has become such a great friend to us boys.  Mum was an avid social media participant, with record time responses with likes and comments to even our most trifling Facebook posts.  Mum was also highly proficient at quick-fire family SMS news updates, efficiently and officially announcing the details of birthday dinners, Christmas gatherings and our first Sunday of the month family dinners.  It is quite shocking that only around 5 months ago we had our final family dinner in St Kilda, which included much pizza and red wine, the gargling of 4 month-old Tom and the roundtable confirmation of our respective fine health.  Unbelievably, the very next day, Mum commenced a battery of x-rays and scans to determine the ominous cause of her side pain.  Only a week or so later, Dad began to confront his own challenges.  Just unbelievable.

After summarily dispensing with breast cancer in 2002, I guess to some extent we took for granted that Mum would be with us for many years to come, so it is heart-wrenching that our dear friend and the family glue has passed.  But I am confident that her efforts will mean the family gathered here today will continue to come together for many years to come and pass this McGregor and Fry family stickiness through to future generations.

Mum’s final wishes extended to her two new daughters, Kate and Calista, receiving some of her most treasured pieces of jewellery.  I have them here and Matt and I want to give them to you two beautiful daughters-in-law of Mum.

Finally, Mum didn’t like the idea of people being glum about her passing.  Mum wanted this day to be graceful like her and for us to be inspired by her memory.  Here is a message to us that I think she would have agreed with.

Do not stand at my grave and weep;

I am not there.  I do not sleep.

I am a thousand winds that blow.

I am the diamond glints on snow.

I am the sunlight on ripened grain.

I am the gentle autumn rain.

When you awaken in the morning’s hush

I am the swift uplifting rush

Of quiet birds in circled flight.

I am the soft stars that shine at night.

Do not stand at my grave and cry;

I am not there.  I did not die.

Tim's older brother Rohan 'Macca' McGregor followed with a 'Song of Memory'

The Song of Memory

When someone we love

passes on beyond life

in the world that we know

and is gone,

A beautiful sense of their presence,

like music remembered by heart,

lingers on…

When someone we love

is no longer with us

but their presence sometimes we can feel,

Our memories can be

Like a song in the heart

With the power to comfort and heal

·         Mum was my best friend

·         Mum was someone I loved

·         Mum taught me how to grow as an eldest son

·         Mum was there when we needed help

·         My Mum and Dad were the best parents a son could have

·         Mum loved her four boys

·         Mum taught me what life is all about so I would cope in the real world

·         Mum showed me how to treat people with respect and how to treat people properly

Tim McGregor's eulogy for his father, Robert McGregor, is also on Speakola.

For Robert McGregor: 'Dear Dr Pop', by Tim (on behalf of baby Tom) McGregor - 2013

23 August 2013, Brighton, Melbourne, Australia

Tom was worried about being asleep during the ceremony and so wanted me to pass on a special message to Dad, or Dr Pop as he was known to Tom.  We sat down to write a letter and this is what Tom said [play Iphone raspberry noises].  I translated all that as follows:

Dear Dr Pop

I’ve only known you for about 8 ½ months, but I think I’ve figured out some important things about you that will help me in the future.

First, you liked Jags a lot.  Dad had a Jag because he wanted to impress you.  I liked being driven around in that car.  Now we have an Audi because Mum wanted a sensible, family car.  I don’t think Germans are sensible.  I think Jags are sensible…and cool.  I will demand to be driven to school in a Jag and I will also drive one when I am older.  I’ll wear Ray Bans like you too because they are also sensible…and cool.

Secondly, you really liked Essendon.  I have been conflicted.  Mum likes Buddy Franklin so I have a lot of Hawthorn stuff.  Then Mum found out that Dad started barracking for Hawthorn because his Grandad did, so Mum decided I should barrack for Essendon because you did.  Dad got a big shock when he took me to visit you in hospital and unwrapped my blankets to find me dressed in an Essendon jumper.  Oh, how we laughed.  Since then, Dad keeps randomly saying things like “peptides”, “amino acids”, “denial” and “Demetriou” whenever I wear my jumper.  I wish you were around to explain what that means.  Essendon definitely seem very fit.

Thirdly, you liked Victoria and insisted that it is the greatest country on earth.  I now understand that there are too many New South Wales players in the Australian cricket team, that it is really Victorian rather than Australian Rules Football and that all the best wines are from Rutherglen, not the Barossa.

Fourthly, you had a beautiful baritone singing voice and were quite an actor with the Peninsula Light Operatic Society.  Dad has been singing and playing some guitar tunes to me recently which, frankly, I humour him into thinking he’s doing a good job.  I also hear Dad tried to be an actor like you but wound up on Neighbours.  Look, in deference to you, I will encourage Dad to keep at it, even if it is tough to watch.

Fifthly, you really loved Granny Mac a lot.  Even when you were sleeping last Saturday, I could see you were holding her hand.  I hope Mum and Dad always hold hands like that too.

Sixthly, you were amazing at English and helped dumb kids and dumb teachers get really smart.  I already know that Mum is bad at English but, so far, she can read me books.  Dad is good at English but probably overplays his hand in dinner conversations and seems a bit of a try hard.  I think you may have come in handy for when I am at school.  If I am running into difficulties on that front, I will say the following to Mum and Dad: “Gee, imagine if Dr Pop was here and how much better my grades would be.  What’s wrong with you two?”.

Finally, you were a really good Dad to Macca, Andy, Dad & Matty and a great Grandad to me.  If I am running into difficulties with Dad, I will say the following to him “Gee, are you sure that’s what Dr Pop would have wanted”?  Hopefully this will help him to be as good a Dad as you were.

Yours sincerely

Tom Robert Dodger McGregor

The McGregor boys also lost their mother to cancer just weeks later. Tim and Rohan McGregor's eulogy for Margaret McGregor is also on Speakola.