Life spent at ‘full noise’ farewelled
People either knew him or they wanted to know him.
It’s an assessment of Richard Ebbett that rang true as more than 700 mourners attended the Manawatu¯ man’s funeral at Awapuni Racecourse on Saturday.
The body of the 39-year-old adventurer was found a week ago after he fell into Mt Ruapehu’s crater lake.
Friend Cam Jefferies said at the service that Ebbett was known for doing everything at ‘‘full noise’’.
‘‘Everyone knew him; everyone wanted to know him.’’
Father Harvey Ebbett said the family had been astonished by how many messages of support they had received on social media.
He thanked the people who had been involved in the search party, and said it was possible his son had fainted and fallen into the crater late.
Ebbett, a farm boy from Pahiatua, attended Palmerston North Boys’ High School and later went on to own the Moto SR Motorcycle dealership in Taupo¯ .
He was well-known and respected in the motocross community.
Jessie King, 19, attended the funeral with her siblings and partner to pay her respects to a man she had never met but who had saved her young life in 2001.
She said Ebbett had been there just at the right time. He was travelling home to Palmerston North on State Highway 3 in the back of his brother’s van following a motocross event in Kawhia.
A tractor towing a trailer full of children – King, her two brothers and a cousin – had crashed into a ditch. The driver, King’s father George Tooman, had been killed.
Ebbett freed two of the children trapped by the trailer, and saved a third who was lying face down in a drain, drowning.
King and her family have never been sure whether it was she or her brother Julian who had been rescued from the drain, but one thing that was always clear was that Ebbett had saved their lives that day.
She never got to say thank you to her hero. ‘‘I would have given him a big hug and said thank you. Thank you for being there at the right time.’’
The theme of Ebbett as a hero resurfaced throughout the three-hour ceremony as various friends paid tribute to him.
Solis Norton, who described Ebbett as his ‘‘true hero’’, said he was a man with a big heart, who was steadfast, positive and as ‘‘honest as a day is long’’.
Ebbett’s humour, love for food, motocross, the outdoors and his sense of adventure were interwoven in the stories being shared.
Dougy Herbert said Ebbett had been a hero to everybody and was a man who had lived life more than most.
Another friend, Scotty Brooker, said Ebbett was an enthusiastic guy with a larger-than-life attitude. He loved his family, his friends, adored his son and would be missed by all.
‘‘You went out on top of the world, who else can say that? – full Richie style,’’ Brooker said.