Friday, January 19, 2007

Goodnight Mercury Man

Managed to get home from London just in time for the moving funeral service of Stamford Mercury photographer Andy Dennis who died suddenly at home on the Twelfth Night of Christmas which I reported on earlier HERE and HERE.

Good to see Priory Church, Deeping St James packed with family and friends to say goodbye to a larger than life character who will be sadly missed in the Deepings and beyond.

Scouting was well represented - Andy had been a scout and cub leader for 20 years. He met the love of his life Lindy through scouts, as she was also a leader. In scouting, Andy had been given the name Baloo - the big kind bear who looks after the little ones.

Andy and Lindy also gave to our local community as active members of Deepings First Responders for the past five years, and their colleagues provided a guard of honour at the funeral.

It was clearly a difficult service for Rev. Mark Warrick to conduct. Like most people in the Deepings, Mark had been good friends with Andy and saw him bring joy to any occasion.

There was also a warm tribute from Andy's boss at the Stamford Mercury who rightly said that Andy was made for the job as Mercury photographer, the public face of the newspaper.

He said Andy had told him years ago that it was his ambition to follow in the footsteps of the late Ken Willis who he had seen welcomed at events as "the Mercury Man".

Andy was Mercury Man.

What a sad loss to our community.

No comments: