My brother and I echo my dad’s sentiment when he wrote mum’s Obituary in January 2016. We feel it is ironic to be writing dad’s so soon after. This isn’t so much an obituary as it is a letter to the people who knew dad.
Dad was clever, strong and a fighter; I know his passing and the long years of suffering through cancer will be in everyone’s mind. However, even with pain he felt he saw beauty in the world that should fill many people who knew him with the incredible joy he felt for life. In his later years dad took up art, a family tradition, in order to represent the world he held dear.
Dad was born September 2nd, 1944, in Bishop Auckland, County Durham. He was Baptised Alfredo Giovanni Dellaspina. Everyone who knew our father knows him as Alfred John Michael della-Spina. The family then moved to Bells Marsh Road just before the 1953 floods. Dad used to regale us with stories of the floods and how bad it actually was – especially when we had the recent floodings.
Our father was an extremely talented man and he started his engineering career in London, which as some of you may know, is where he met the love of his life. Mum and dad were married in Oslo, Norway, February 8th, 1969. The happy couple often returned to see their Norwegian family and this became a large and vital part of our life growing up. Soon after they were married they returned to Gorleston, where dad helped out in the family business that many of you will be familiar with.
My father was a clever man, his ideas for the manufacture of ice-cream were well ahead of his time. Chocolate dipped icecreams, a variety of sundaes, ice-cream mixed with chocolate delights, models of his creative flair hanging outside and the list goes on. Who can forget the variety of flavours created from Cointreau liquor to lemon water ice? Many a morning dad would create his ice-cream (at the crack of dawn) only to have someone knock on the door to purchase litres of the prepared goodness.
Dad always referred to himself as the grumpy one but in fact he had a warmth that radiated out – a kindness and gentleness that was always there, especially when looking after his two boys. Time was very precious with dad as he always worked, seven days of the week and had little to no time off work. However, we still remember the conker gathering, long walks around the broads and model aeroplane flying.
Both my brother and I will miss this clever, clever man. Our families will especially miss his dry sense of wit and humour. On the Saturday before he passed he quoted Oscar Wilde “To lose one parent may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness.” Such was his humour.
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