Hail to the Chief
Kerry and I heard the sad news today that her grandfather, Edgar Stern, died today. I have only known Edgar for the eight or nine years that Kerry and I have been together and so I cannot possibly know him or miss him in the way that the Stern family did.
The best way I can think to describe Edgar is as a ‘patriarch’ in the biggest, best ‘Biblical’ sense of the word. Edgar was a blacksmith and a farrier who was the head of the family company. His three sons all trained as farriers and together they have built a company and a reputation in the South-East that, to me, as an outsider can only be viewed as phenomenal. I often meet people with horses and if the conversation gets round to farriery, it is a rare person in that part of the world that has not heard of the Sterns and all those that do know them praise the quality and integrity of their work. Edgar was the head of that household, the head of that business; the head of the clan.
As I say, I’ve only known Edgar in his later years but even as an old man, he was physically vigorous as you’d expect a Blacksmith to be. He had an enormous pair of hands that would envelop mine and squeeze the life from me with every handshake. I can only imagine what a sight he would have been in his prime.
While I have been part of the Stern family, Edgar’s grandsons have trained as farriers bringing a third generation to the company. I noticed some time ago how they all called him ‘Chief’ and while they occasionally railed against his sarcastic comments on their shoemaking and his constant stream of advice, the love and respect for their grandfather never wavered.
We will have such happy memories. Kerry and I were delighted at a recent family party to see Bethya leading her great-grandad around with her tiny hand swallowed in his, showing him the bouncy castle and enjoying his company. You could tell by his face that he was loving every second of it too.
It will always be a sadness to Kerry and I that he never got to meet our new son, Nathanael. In some way though, I don’t think we could have named Nate any better as a fitting tribute to Edgar. In the gospel of John, when Jesus meets Nathanael it says…
‘When Jesus saw him coming he said, “There’s a real Israelite, not a false bone in his body.”’
I didn’t know Edgar as well as all those who loved him, but I knew him as a proud man, sometimes a bloody-minded man, always with a funny comment and a dry-wit. He was a real Englishman, not a false bone in his body.
Hail to the Chief.
December 20th, 2006 at 5:09 pm
[...] Undoubtedly, we are all missing life in Kent. Family and friends are really missed by all of us, including Bethya, and it has been hard at times since September to remain focussed and not wish to be elsewhere, especially for Kerry when she is being a full-time mum to two kids and doesn’t have all her friends around her. Of course, our homesickness wasn’t helped by the death of Kerry’s grandfather in late September. Of all the people we miss, we miss Edgar most of all. [...]