Eulogy and Memorial Slideshow for Kelly Stearne

I put together a short slideshow of pictures and even some video of Kelly and showed at his Memorial here in Adelaide on Sunday, 29 May.  

The soundtrack were all among Kelly's favourites.  

Early years - Yesterday by Lennon and McCartney, performed by The Beatles

Curling years - We Are the Champions by Freddie Mercury, performed by Queen

Canadian years - With a Little Help from My Friends by Lennon and McCartney, performed by Joe Cocker

Aussie years - Theme from The Last Waltz by Robbie Robertson, performed by The Band

Please have  look.

Also, here is the Eulogy I wrote for my brother:

Thank you for coming along today to help remember and celebrate the life of John Timothy Kelly Stearne – that really was his full name.

In particular, thanks to people from the walking group, the coffee shop, the Port Adelaide and Woodville Bowling Clubs, and his Aussie family and friends.

Kelly was my brother and I loved him dearly.  I will miss him.  His loss hasn’t left a hole in my life -  it’s left more of a crater.

Kelly and I were both born in Calgary, Canada.  We were always close.  We did all of the things kids and teens do together, school, sports, shenanigans … we shared the same circle of friends.

Our parents were both teachers and they loved to travel over the 2-month summer holiday each year.  Way back it was camping in a tent, then caravanning, they took us to Europe when we were tweens.  Thus began Kelly’s lifelong fascination for and love of travel.  He set foot on every continent except Antarctica and he must’ve visited half of the countries in the world.  He had a dream that one day he’d open a little coffee shop with travel books that people could come in a read and plan their next holiday … or maybe it was a travel agency that served coffee.  Unfortunately he couldn't make decent coffee, but he loved to drink it though.  I reckon his home away from home became Café Latino in Belmore Terrace, right across the railway tracks from his place.  The coffee there is great by the by.

In high school Kelly made the boy’s curling team.  Curling is essentially lawn bowls on ice and Kelly was good at it.  Very good.  He and his team mates won the Canadian Schoolboy and Junior championships in 1975 and 1977, and the world junior championships in 1976 and 1978.  The schoolboy team seemed destined for greatness and from the age of 16 or 17 Paul, Neil, Glen and Kelly were mixing it with the men … and winning.  They won just about all there was to win, cash prizes, cars and trophies.

They were probably the first curling professionals, winning enough so they didn’t really need to work.  And they had way too much fun driving all over western Canada in Paul’s van playing for money and beating the old farts …. guys.

They were all bit long haired and non-conformist.  Hec Gervais (one of the older guys on the circuit) once said of Paul Gowsell, the skip; “With two haircuts he’d be a decent curler.”

In 1980 the boys stepped up into the men’s competition and finished 3^rd in the Canadian Championships (The Brier).  Everyone expected that they would bounce back and win the next one or go on to win at the Olympics.  But they all just seemed to lose interest and Paul, Neil and Glen all went off to do other things and Kelly developed a few health issues.

Kelly continued play in the men’s Super League (like our Premier League in bowls), he did some coaching and played in a range of other teams for fun. 

The Gowsell team did reform for one last open cash bonspiel in November last year when Kelly re-joined his old buddies in Vancouver, BC.  For the record they did win 3 games and lost 2.  They did win the door prize, which was a refund of their entry fee!

Kelly studied leisure education at college and uni, and he worked in the disability sector organising recreation and sports programs for clients of the Developmental Disability Resource Centre in Calgary.  DDRC was his only real job ever and he loved it.

So he worked with disabled kids, travelled extensively (with his mate Jimmy), and continued to have as much fun as possible.

Kelly did not enjoy the best of health.  In fact, in the game of life, he was dealt a pretty crummy hand:

-              In his late 20s he developed epilepsy.  It was well controlled for a few years.

-              In 1992 he travelled to Central America and picked up Hepatitis A and some weird bacterial gut infection that caused intestinal perforations and bleeding.  He developed a super-high fever, his liver failed and he lapsed into a coma for about 2 weeks.  We all thought he would die, and I flew back to Canada to support Mum and Dad.  But he didn’t die.  I remember seeing him when he came out of the coma and he was a bit groggy, but he looked at me and said, “God, I must be sick for you to be here!”  He always had a sense of humour.

-              In the end he needed a couple of operations to stop the internal bleeding … and then his epilepsy returned and became virtually uncontrollable.

-              He did get married in 1993 to Judy (a fellow curler he’d met at the Brier 1980).

-              However his epilepsy steadily worsened and in 1994 he needed brain surgery to remove the bit that was causing seizures. The surgery was a success …

-              Unfortunately, he had a stroke after the operation that left him with some short term memory problems – he could never remember anyone’s name (especially if he met you after ‘94) and he had trouble finding words.

-              His marriage ended in 2000.  He never had any children and he moved back to Mum’s place and was living in her basement suite until she died in 2003.

-              Due to the seizures he had quite a few nasty falls fracturing his eye socket on one occasion (that left him with almost permanent double-vision) and fracturing his jaw and smashing up his teeth another time.

Now in spite of all of this he remained an enjoy every sandwich kind of guy.  Everyone that knew him describes him as always positive, smiling and trying to crack a joke.  Let me tell you his jokes were much better before his stroke when he could remember … uhhh that thing you say at the end that makes people laugh uhhhhh …. It’s called a push something … Begins with a ‘P’ anyways … yeah, the punch line.  That’s right.  It’s pretty tough to tell a good joke when you can’t get the punchline out, but that never stopped him from trying, did it?

After Mum passed away, he decided (well, we decided) it might be a good idea for him to move to Australia to be closer to his remaining family (specifically me, Deb and our boys).  It was not a straightforward thing, but with some persistence and a couple of dozen letters to various pollies he got a Permanent Resident visa and came out here to live in 2005.

He rented at Alberton for a couple of years, then we bought a unit at Woodville where he lived a short 2 km walk from me.  Well, it was a short walk for Kelly, as he was a walking nut.  He couldn’t drive due to the epilepsy and vision problems.  He had a bike but I didn’t want him to ride it for the same reasons.  So he walked, and walked, and walked … everywhere.  A day trip for him might include a stroll to Glelenlg, then into the city and perhaps West Lakes or Semaphore or Port Adelaide.  He did use the buses and trains if he got tired or if the weather turned nasty.  Some of you probably saw him walking around the neighbourhood and offered him a lift on more than one occasion I’m sure.

Given his curling background I thought lawn bowls might be just the thing.  I even thought that there may be some transferrable skills … but maybe not.  He did enjoy bowls, probably more the companionship than the competition.

He was always happy to spend some time at the club putting a few bowls down, having a ginger beer (he couldn’t drink real beer due to his meds) and just chatting to people.

In recent years Kelly and I fell into a routine of catching up for dinner Monday, Wednesday and Thursday.  For the last 10+ years Wednesday night was our family and friends’ dinner.  Saturdays was our day for bowls or footy or a walk and on Sundays we’d have lunch over a game of cribbage at a pub or restaurant.  He was a good card player, more strategic than I am.  I’ll miss the cards.

Kelly went out for a late night walk on Saturday 7 May.  He fell and hit his head pretty hard.  He lost consciousness.  Probably because he’d had previous surgery and other skull fractures, he was susceptible to head injury.  He never regained consciousness and passed away very peacefully on Monday 9 May.  My son (Jack Kelly) and I were with him at the end.

Kelly was a good gift giver.  He spent ages researching and working out the perfect gift, card and wrapping.  So it shouldn’t surprise anyone that he became an organ donor and his big ol’ kindly heart, liver, kidneys, pancreas and corneas are hopefully are doing someone some good right now.

He was a good man and the best brother you could ever want.  He drove me nuts sometimes, but I hope and pray that he saw more love from me, and for others, than he saw frustration.

The world is just so much the poorer without him.

I’d like to ask Father Conrad Paterson to say a prayer for Kelly and those left to remember him, and then I’d like you to watch a little movie I made.