CRAIG LANHAM (1984) – EULOGY

Good afternoon everyone. My name is Stephen and I was a close friend of Craig’s for all of our teenage and adult years. For very nearly forty-five years in fact.

We first met in the autumn of 1979 as new pupils at our secondary school – King Edwards in Birmingham, England – when we were thirteen years of age. We immediately became firm friends, and that is the way it stayed.

This friendship was by far the longest uninterrupted one I have had in my life – only one step removed really from a family relationship – and thus something of extraordinary preciousness that can, by its nature never be replaced.

I can honestly say that during these decades, while Craig and I often vigorously disagreed about things – particularly political and sporting things – we never ever seriously fell out at all – nowhere near in fact. Our little quarrels were few and far between and were always conducted in the best of humour.

Never more than a few weeks passed in this entire time span when we did not talk at length in person or on the telephone, basically conducting a continuous non-stop conversation – the conversation of a lifetime – one that very very sadly has now had to come to an end far too soon.

Like all deep friendships, ours was sustained by shared interests, shared values, a shared sense of humour and the simple joy of spending time with one another. For the most part we shared joyful holiday times together. It did not seem at all odd to spend an evening or two with Craig during my honeymoon. And of course the longer time passed, and the more we invested in the relationship, the stronger it became. Our friendship simply became a central and non-negotiable fact of our lives.

Now you would be forgiven for thinking, reading the order of service for today’s proceedings, that Mr Craig Lanham was Scottish, or even possibly Irish, or a touch of both. A proud wearer of a tartan kilt perhaps, or a descendant of some proud, ancient McLanham clan? We have already heard one of the two most beloved tunes of the Scottish nationalist, and will hear the other before we finish.

Arriving here today some of you may have remarked to one another something along the lines of ‘I didn’t know Craig was of celtic stock’ and thought that you may have learned something new about his identity.

Well, I have to inform you that this is all rather misleading. Craig loved to visit Scotland – he adored the highland scenery, playing golf and consuming large amounts of haggis. He had a bizarre passion for the highland cow I seem to remember.

But he was in every way as far as I have ever been aware very much an Englishman – in many ways an archetypal Englishman. A lover of cricket and traditional English foods – someone possessed of good manners and a self-deprecating sense of humour. And also a man who was wholly unapologetic about his personal eccentricities.

Craig was born in the English midlands in May 1966 and grew up in a Worcestershire village called Wythall a few miles south of the Birmingham suburbs. Craig – and his younger sister Verity who is with us today – lived as children in a beautiful house with a large garden that backed directly on to a golf course. It would thus have been strange if golf had not become one of his dearest hobbies.

I spent many happy times there. It was a comfortable and very stable upbringing in a loving family environment. The family was very much a part of the community and I have no recollection at all of Craig ever having any kind of rebellious teenage phase. He was always a serious minded and mature person – in all honesty I do not really think – in essence – he ever really changed at all in all the years I knew him. He was always mature and middle-aged in spirit, even when he was fifteen.

Aside from being my greatest friend, Craig was also someone who I greatly admired. He was always, from an early age, a very hardworking person. This was partly a product of ambition – he was always pretty competitive – but was also I think a product of his strong sense of duty. His work ethic was never something that he only deployed in his own interest.

I also very much admired Craig’s lack of arrogance. This was a man who was pretty successful in life – professionally and personally. I never fully understood how he earned his living – something to do with accountancy I believe – but he was never someone to sell, let alone oversell his own achievements. He just got on with life, content to be one of those people who help make our world go around smoothly and effectively – but who do not look to take the credit all the time.

He was also someone who gave every impression throughout his life of being contented. He kept a cool head through all ups and downs, always supportive, always reliable, always on time, never overly emotional, always 100% honest in his dealings with everyone – a kind, thoughtful and decent man in all respects. Even when terminally ill, he would always ask about the much less serious ailments of others. Seriously impressive, but not someone who would ever blow his own trumpet.

Before he met Janeen and moved to the USA. Craig was (most of the time) a contented and apparently confirmed bachelor. He lived quietly in a suburban house, watching football in the winter, cricket in the summer and a bewildering number of television soap operas all the year round.

His biggest passion was always politics. I always found it amazing that anyone could be quite so absolutely certain that he was right about everything. He was terrifically opinionated. There was not much room for nuance or doubt in Craig’s political schema – and this made him ideal material for a career as an elected representative.

I honestly think that he might, had things turned out differently, ended up as a member of the UK parliament. And a very good one he would have been too.

At an unusually early age he became active in his local Conservative Party organisation, sticking out like a bit of a sore thumb simply because of his youth. But of course because Craig in youth already behaved to all intents and purposes like a man in late middle age this worked just fine. He was absolutely adored by the many much older people who formed his main friendship network and he received plenty of encouragement.

His financial competence and rock-solid integrity made him the ideal person to become treasurer of his local Party association in which capacity he was heavily involved in a move to force one MP to retire against his will, before inserting someone much more appealing in his place. This manoeuvre was accomplished in an astonishingly gentlemanly kind of way, attracting hardly any hostile press publicity at all. I was most impressed.

Craig went on to be elected as a local councillor in the town of Bromsgrove in Worcestershire, and to hold his seat at successive elections. He joined the local government cabinet (running the finances of course), going on to become Chairman of the Council for a full year of office. In these roles he always carried himself with great ease and confidence when surrounded by much older people.

I was amused to read in the published obituary Janeen wrote that Craig was the first chairman in the history of Bromsgrove Council to father a child while in office – this of course being the infant who turned into the amazing Skye. In truth though I think his achievement was still greater. Craig was, in all likelihood, surely the first Chairman in the history of Bromsgrove council to come into office with his own teeth.

He was still in his thirties, when it was the norm for holders of that august position to be 70 plus, sometimes much older still. Needless to say of course, he carried it all off brilliantly, wearing his chain of office at countless charity events, saying a few well-chosen words as and when required, and most importantly chairing council meetings (which could get quite stormy) with efficiency and scrupulous fairness.

A few years earlier, having completed his studies at the University of York and qualified as a chartered accountant, Craig started working for a company called Sunrise Medical – the first in a series of senior roles he took on in financial management on behalf of international corporations.

My memory of the details is a touch hazy, but in my recollection he was assigned for quite a long period to work as part of a project team that was supervising the roll-out across the company’s international operations of a big new piece of financial management software that everyone needed to be trained to use.

I remember finding it amusing at the time to watch Craig – who was always very much a home bird who did not go on holiday anywhere else but Scotland (ever) – suddenly transforming himself into something of a jet-setting international executive.

It all seemed extraordinarily glamourous to me to hear each week about where he was going next. For the European assignments he would fly out on a Monday morning and always be back the following Friday, but once he started having to travel further afield to Australia, and over here to the USA, weekly commuting in this way, became impossible.

So he would go away for several weeks on end, and this gave him the opportunity to travel all over the USA. He fell in love with parts of the country, particularly if I remember rightly, Colorado, which he adored.

On one visit – over twenty years ago now – he was assigned to work at some premises his company ran in Florida. The weather being lovely, and having a spare weekend to amuse himself, he headed off to sit for a day in the sunshine on the coast in Quay West.

And it was there that his life changed completely and remarkably, because sitting a short distance away was Janeen. They started talking, rapidly became friends and like the proverbial bolt from the blue, in burst the woman who was to become the love of Craig’s life.

And so commenced the relationship that would lead to nineteen years of marriage, permanent emigration to Pennsylvania, joint custody of a succession of dogs, and the rich and deeply satisfying life he was able to lead here over recent years. It also, of course, brought us Skye, – Craig and Janeen’s hugely impressive daughter – someone who has many qualities, not the least of which is her lovely, strong singing voice.

How it came to pass that Craig – someone who was essentially tone deaf and was an even worse singer than me – came to produce a daughter who sang on the professional stage defies belief. No doubt one day some geneticist working at the cutting edge of scientific research may be able to give us the answer.

Three years ago Craig went to see his eye doctor for a routine eye check-up, and it was then that a small tumour was discovered growing in one of his eyes. This is a very rare condition. I asked my own optician about it at the time, and she said that it would be a once-in-a career event to discover such a tumour. But there it was and, of course, as soon became apparent, cancer was also discovered growing in his liver. And while the eye cancer was readily removed via surgery, such is not yet possible with tumours in the liver.

And so he had to embark on what seemed like endless rounds of treatment, many deeply unpleasant for him, and some experimental in nature. He was blessed to have fantastic doctors and these treatments kept him alive – and for much of the time pretty healthy – for months and indeed years longer than most people get to live when diagnosed with cancer of the liver.

Throughout it all, knowing all the time what was ultimately coming his way – he fought and fought. He continued working for as long as he possibly could, keeping his diagnosis very private. Ultimately though, of course, and inevitably, the disease spread, became untreatable, and took him from us three short months ago at far too young an age. The tragedy of our shared human condition made manifest.

Craig’s was a very full life, a very successful one, and one that has given all of us who knew and loved him countless very happy memories. This is something we must all never stop being grateful for.

I would like to finish by asking everyone here today to reflect on how Craig’s death – even though not unexpected – has inevitably left the most enormous gaping hole in the lives of his family. Particularly Janeen, Skye and Ellen with whom he shared his domestic life over recent years.

The gap he leaves is totally irreplaceable, and I would like to ask you all to be mindful of this and to give the family whatever love and support you are able to – not just now in the dreadful first few weeks and months after Craig passed away from us, but in the longer-term future too as they slowly re-forge their lives in what is going to be the very difficult post-Craig world that they are now obliged to live in.

Thank you all very much.

Stephen Taylor (1984)