RIP Jack McFaull
Just got back from the funeral in Kilbirnie of Jack McFaull. Normally when a funeral service takes more than an hour I get restless, but this service went on for two hours with no restlessness from me as there were so many great stories about Jack.
Jack was 87 years old, so one did not have the sadness you have at funerals of younger people, but until his cancer he was so active, that there was sorrow he didn’t manage to make the Rugby World Cup next year.
My relationship with Jack goes back to the early 1990s when we were both volunteers at National Party HQ. Now National is made up of volunteers and exists on the. But the average volunteer puts in just a couple of hours a week into the party. Jack worked 30 to 40 hours a week as a volunteer.
Jack was effectively a full-time unpaid staff member. After he retired from the work force, he spent the best part of a decade working at National HQ as, well a massive data cruncher. He was the resident boundaries expert and served on the Boundaries Commission.Several MPs owe their seats to Jack!
We heard a lot from Jack’s family – he had four daughters and many grand-children. The youngest, aged 10, delivered a lovely tribute without speech notes. Almost all of them told stories of how even at the age of 86 Jack would be found high up his trees, trimming them himself. They all expected his likely cause of death would be falling from a tree.
One of his son in laws who lives in the US spoke about how Jack got him into playing Virtual NPC rugby online, and that he even managed to put perform Jack most years, because Jack could never bring himself to predict that Otago or Wellington would lose!
We also heard about his decades old car, that he drove about everywhere, and how he took someone trying to pass him as a mortal insult, so the passengers often needed a whiskey after he dropped them off.
Jack served in WWII as an ambulance driver in Egypt and Italy, and we heard how a few years ago he navigated his way to a hotel in Rome using his old WWII map.
In his professional career, Jack was a highly respected economist. He held senior positions with then old Wool Board and then served the Dairy Board as its Secretary before he was seconded to be one of the inaugural staff members of the new Prime Ministers Advisory Group (now DPMC) to PM Muldoon.
Jack was the PM’s primary advisor on primary production issues. His colleague John Wood spoke on Jack’s time there, and how Jack’s impish humour even extended to Muldoon. Everyone else was terrified of Muldoon, but Jack would actually be as irreverent to the PM, as he was to everyone else.
Len Bayliss and Mary Hedges spoke about Jack’s contributions to economics.
Chris Finlayson spoke about Jack’s contribution to National, and how he even in the 2008 election, Jack was out delivering pamphlets, including (the rather steep) Severn Street in Island Bay.
Hugh Templeton, and many others spoke also. On top of the ten listed speakers, around half a dozen more spoke up so they could pay tribute. And I think almost everyone listening was thinking the same – that if I could have tributes like this made at my funeral, I would have lived a very good and worthwhile life.