So many wonderful memories, a few that spring to mind from childhood is Dad and Uncle Lance racing their matching HQ holdens up the Auckland motorway must have been early 90’s. I thought they were the coolest and they probably did too. Then there was the stream of not so child friendly fancy cars and motorbikes he had, oh how I wished to go on one but if you got caught going near them with sticky fingers he wouldn’t be too happy! I still thought he was so cool. I remember going to watch him in a musical called ‘bouncers’ pretty sure he would have made a good one in real life too. He’s going to be so missed, especially by my Dad. They had some childhood together. I’ll never tire of hearing those stories, like when they were sharing a room together and uncle Lance was snoring too loud, Dad threw a book across the room and it hit Uncle Lance in the face! Dad pulled the covers up and pretended to be asleep fearful of revenge then Uncle Lance leaped across the room and gave him what for! The last memory I have is one of the last times I was home and we were all camping in stony bay. I went Kayaking with Mark and my now husband Chris. A large wave came as we went through a sea cave and swept Chris over onto the beach and knocked Mark into the water! Mark was ok, but he’d lost Uncle Lances lucky hat he’d been wearing. I couldn’t see Chris but I’m not sure what I was more worried about, Chris missing or the fact Uncle Lances lucky hat was gone and the reprimand we’d face once we got back haha! All joking aside, you will be missed so much Uncle Lance. I’m going to cherish the memories you made so special. Please look out for everyone xxx

I had the pleasure of working with Lance at Kinleith 20-30 years ago. One incident comes to mind which demonstrated Lance’s practical approach to problem solving. The pulp marketing team had an ongoing problem keeping track of the production of multiple grades, customer orders & payment status and the moving feast of the shipping schedule. What we needed was a system to provide a live summary of “the status” rather than manually updating it daily. I called a meeting of the IT people to seek a solution and the head office (Aucklanders!) brigade proposed developing a program which would cost about $100k. After telling them to stick it where the sun doesn’t shine, I resigned myself to fact that there wasn’t to be a quick fix solution: bloody frustrating. Well, lo and behold, after a couple of weeks Lance fronts up with the solution where he had gone away and quietly adapted the pulp order system (Elixer?) solving the problem at virtually zero cost. Essentially a bit of brilliant left field creativity! RIP Lance.

Goodbye my old loyal childhood friend and tennis partner. RIP Lance.

Lance was really great to work with, he was always considerate and courteous and brought great support and competence to the team. I will really miss working with him and appreciate all that he did. Heartfelt regards Craig