David Thomas Eynon (8 Aug 1934 - 1 Jun 2022)

David Thomas Eynon, husband of Kathy, father to Laura and Lee, grandad, great grandad, friend, colleague and gentleman passed away peacefully on the first of June at the age of eighty seven.

What follows is a sketchy account of the notable events in the life of my dad gathered from my personal memories and accounts reported by trusted sources. Much of it is subject to the official secrets act and therefore not easily verifiable and the gaps have been pieced together from scraps of overheard conversations and freedom of information requests:

Born on the 8th August 1934 to David and Lillian Eynon in Croydon, South London, dad was the first son of a Welsh miner who came to London in search of a job and a better life during the great depression and settled down with a local girl to bring up a family on a meagre wage.

By the time war broke out, dad had risen to fame locally by, bare handedly, protecting his younger brother Trevor and the local population by fighting the bears found in Wandle Park. (I have not been able to verify the existence of a Grizzly bear presence in Croydon at that time but have been assured that there was by his second brother Gary who showed me the very tree where it happened).

His prowess in the pugilistic arena was soon confirmed when, after a dogfight between a Spitfire and a Messerschmitt 109 over the capital in September of 1940 the downed German pilot was successfully taken into custody by dad, much to the admiration of the local defence volunteers who subsequently attended the scene. I believe that it was this encounter which was to lead to his later invitation to serve in her majesty’s forces overseas. But I am jumping ahead.

In school David excelled in all manor of sports, representing the school in boxing (obviously), Football and Cricket. His grasp of writing and language was elegant, some would say colourful, and was in complete contrast to his grasp of Mathematics which didn’t really matter as it would, of course, be of no use whatsoever in his future career.

Dad’s ability to make physical sports and crafts appear effortless combined with his rakish good looks were to define his young adulthood but would lead to some tough decisions; such as when he had glided through to the semi-finals of the South East Schools boxing championships without so much as a scratch but had then met an opponent who, luckily, managed to score a direct hit on his finely defined nose. He quickly decided (as only one with such a sharp instinct could) that, in the interest of future romantic liaisons, he should make an early retirement from this particular sporting discipline.

His feats on the football pitch were rewarded by a spell as goalkeeper for the semi-professional side Redhill Town and he played for many clubs including Cubit Town and in various leagues until his premature retirement due to a sore finger at the age of 32. He always told me when I questioned the seriousness of his sporting injury that “the ball was much heavier than nowadays, they don’t know how easy they’ve got it in the premier league”.

Dad’s skill as a craftsman was uncanny! He learned it during his apprenticeship as a joiner during the late forties and I was delighted, as a kid, to receive hand built toys from off-cuts of wood and watch as he reeled off sketch after sketch of familiar objects with remarkable accuracy. Perhaps it was this ability which was to lead to arguably his greatest achievement. But I am jumping ahead.

Have I already mentioned his elegance? It was this, and his rakish good looks which led to the luckiest break he ever got. For on a fateful night in 1953, on the dance floor of the Coronation Ballroom in Ramsgate, he joined hands, and hearts, with the love of his life - Kathleen Iris East, a feisty East End girl with an eye for the adventure that they started and which leads, via many a winding road, to the very doors behind which Kathy still sits alone.

The first hairpin in that road came early. When the week after a whirlwind romance and wedding, that invitation arrived - the one that I mentioned before, you know… Anyway, her Majesty had been doing some tricky negotiations with her subjects in the Middle East and decided that, in the event of some future conflict involving a despotic ruler and a potential economic advantage, the State of Iraq needed to have some accurate maps made to improve on a simple document inscribed with the single word ‘Sand’. So, having heard of my dad’s ‘unique’ skill set, she invited him to lead a team of surveyors to chart the terrain over a two year period starting in 1954. Of course it all had to be done under strictest secrecy due to the attention of aforementioned despotic ruler and, should you try to investigate, dad’s role will be recorded as ‘Driver, Sapper Eynon, Royal Engineers’ but, trust me, he was the man behind the mission - and he’s got photos to prove it.

Job done, (they did use the maps he helped to make in Gulf Wars 1&2), he returned to a hero’s welcome at ‘The Londoner’ a pub in commercial road that a lovely couple called Ronnie and Reggie often frequented and where he helped out in the cellar for a while between a few temporary jobs including as a railway navvy and labourer.

Dad was a great driver, he worked as an instructor in the 70’s and got his first real job for the Post Office as a mail van driver in the late 50’s where the steady income and a fairly safe home with the wife and mother-in-law meant that he and mum felt safe to start a family; I came along in 1958 and was followed 4 years later by my sister.

Did I mention that dad was good with his hands? Well the postmaster general spotted this too and asked him to rewire the telephone network for the whole of London! It took him almost 10 years and, by the end, he had invented a new way of waterproofing the cabling which also doubled as a brilliant filler for the wings of his Vauxhall Victor 101 Super which, as you will know, was notorious for going rusty.

By this time his wealth had grown out of all proportion to his former relatively humble means and he and Kathy invested in an idyllic countryside cottage into which the four of us moved in the summer of 1967.

Dagenham was an interesting village, perhaps not as leafy as it once was but it was a home of our own and we loved it.

From our 3 bedroom terraced house just off the A13, dad faced a formidable commute and was bored with his important but unrewarding job of passing on the techniques of cold plumbing to new recruits. He had noticed during his travels, however, that London’s manholes were just not up to the job of holding all the new wires involved in the telecommunications boom of the 70’s and decided to recruit some useful diggers and shovelers from the ranks of our Irish friends at McNicholas Engineering to build us some more. Supported by the now renamed BT, he planned and supervised for years until optical fibres came along and made all the wires redundant!

But not before Dave had noticed a potentially catastrophic fault with the materials involved in the construction of his new manholes. Even more serious, the very same ‘High Alumina Cement’ had been used in the construction of some public buildings. Dad could see that the cement was crumbling before his eyes! And he went straight to the head of BT and demanded that he be given his own van (complete with tea making equipment) and that he be allowed to work out his remaining years as an employee finding and reporting every dangerous manhole in the City.

His last, and arguably most important contribution to the history of the country took him neatly up to retirement (at 57) and he then embarked on his later contributions to the welfare of his growing circle of family and friends (he now has 5 grandchildren and 3 great grandchildren).

He never lost his sporting prowess, having played Squash throughout his 30’s, 40’s and part of his 50’s. He took up golf late in life but soon became a useful player with all the grace and style that he had shown in his youth. Along the way he made many friends who will miss his repertoire of comedy punchlines - burnt into their memory by continuous repetition. But his single biggest talent was to amaze and delight every child who made his acquaintance. His uncanny ability to first amputate, and then to rejoin his own thumb would dumbfound and shock everyone in the room (unless you looked from a certain angle) and led to comments such as ‘he was the best uncle anyone could have possibly had’ and ‘why doesn’t it bleed’.

David Eynon was a lovely man, a devoted husband, father, grandfather and great grandfather. He always had our backs, he alway stood his round, he loved a life of fun and we who had the privilege of knowing him and calling him friend, uncle, brother, dad or just ‘boo boo’ will miss him every day.

And that’s the truth… (well the last bit anyway)!