Rex Lucas

Rex was a strong, kind, independent, and loyal man.

The strongest man I ever knew. The kindest man I'll ever know. My father: sailor, teacher, sculptor in wood. He fought for his country and won. He fought for his family and won. He fought his cancer harder than anyone. But that fight he couldn't win.

He served as a chief shipwright in the Royal Navy for 25 years, including service under fire in the Suez crisis. Then he retrained - back to college for a year - and taught secondary schoolkids woodwork and metalwork or Craft and Design Technology as they called it.

He made sculptures by carving and turning wood. They are beautiful and made with love.

He had to take early retirement to look after my mum Judy through a series of heart attatcks. He didn't let on how serious they were til she died.

She'd had a pacemaker fitted. He found her collapsed in her favourite chair in front of the tv, called an ambulance and the medics thought she was still allive. He followed the ambulance to the hospital -as he'd done before, ready to nurse her back again. But the paramedics mistook the pacemaker's pulses for her own pulse.

She was dead.

He was so thrown he couldn't remember my phone number - I live 4 hours away - for 2 days.

He'd been taking endless paracetamol to dull the pain so he could wheel her round in her wheelchair. Taking them like the enormously strong macho man he'd been in the Navy. In handfuls. They ruined his stomach wall. He got pancreatitis, then stomach cancer. At 70 he persauded a surgeon it was OK to operate. They removed most of the stomach. He lived another year but it had spread and he was in huge pain all the time, despite huge doses of morphine. He died of cancer of the colon.

He never complained, he fought to the end. But that was the only battle he ever lost.

And the world lost the most honest, simple, straightforward, kind man there's ever been.

Dad, I never said enough how much I loved you.

Dom wanted to be like you, not me.

You'd have been proud of his kendo, his writings, his physical ability freerunning...

You weren't into organised religion but you were proud to be a simple carpenter like Jesus, and always used your strength to help the weaker. You came from a different world. The Twin Towers fell a year after you died and the whole world changed.

We miss you. I miss you. I love you.