Denis: Tribute to a former colleague

Nov 25 2008 by Our Correspondent, Huddersfield Daily Examiner

MARIA and I celebrated our 41st wedding anniversary this month.

“I remember our 10th,” she said. “We spent it with Andy Donkersley. Very romantic.”

Andy, the hippy reporter with long hair who would have preferred to be Bob Dylan, and who was a part of our family for three years.

We got out the photographs of the occasion. Must get in touch, we said.

Instead, a couple of days later, Midlands’ journalist Philip Farmer got in touch to say Andy had been found dead at his home in Shropshire.

He had died on our anniversary. He was 52.

Even though we hadn’t seen Andy for years it was a shock. He was a gentle spirit, a loyal friend and so honest it hurt.

He was an old boy of King James’s School at Almondbury and his late parents lived in Beaumont Park. He joined the Examiner as a trainee reporter.

I went to Telford Crematorium for his funeral and to finally catch up.

The place was packed and three former colleagues spoke about him at a moving humanist ceremony.

They told of a brilliant reporter whose watchwords were accuracy and truth, whose quirky and warm outlook on life touched everyone he met.

They talked of his vulnerability; that I knew too well.

I was catching up on the last 30 years of his life and was so pleased he had made so many friends and been a success in the career about which he had been passionate.

When we met Andy was 20 and I was 35, but we bonded. Kindred spirits, or perhaps he took me as a mentor. He was going through a troubled few years and he stayed with us, came to us with any problem.

He left to backtrack my own career, by going to work in the North-East and then the Evening Gazette in Blackpool.

Eventually he went to the Midlands to the Wolverhampton Express and Star and we lost touch, apart from the occasional late night phone call.

After the funeral, everyone packed into Jaspers, Andy’s local pub in Shifnal, the lovely little rural town where he lived, and more memories were exchanged.

“I’m not saying it just because it’s his funeral,” someone said. “But when you saw him approaching, that gentle smile on his face, head tilted to one side, and ready to tell you a story, it gave you a lift. He warmed your heart.”

And that’s a hard-nosed journalist talking.

Maria and I often mentioned him over the years. We should get in touch, we said. Now it’s too late.

I’ll never forget Andy and I’ll probably go to the musical memorial that is being planned for him in the spring.

But the one message he has left me with, with that gentle smile and head on one side, is not to take friends for granted.

There are a few I shall be making an effort to see more often, before we all get together one last time, either at their funeral, or mine.