Tributes to father killed in air crash
Legacy of plane disaster victim ‘will live on in us’
DISASTER: The Hull family of a man among 157 passengers and crew killed when an Ethiopian Airlines plane crashed shortly after take off say his legacy will live on “in everything we do”.
Joseph Waithaka, 55, who lived in the city for a decade, was on his way back to Kenya from a trip to see his family and meet his baby granddaughter.
THE HULL family of a man among 157 passengers and crew killed when an Ethiopian Airlines plane crashed shortly after take off say his legacy will live on “in everything we do”.
Joseph Waithaka, 55, who lived in the city for a decade, was on his way back to Kenya from a trip to see his family and meet his twomonth-old granddaughter when Flight ET302 came down six minutes after leaving Addis Ababa, Ethiopia’s capital city.
His family described him as a father figure, who “didn’t give up on people most people had given up on”.
The former probation officer, who was one of seven Britons to die in Sunday’s crash, had moved back to his native Kenya in 2015, but would regularly visit England.
His wife Jane and two of his three children still live in the Hull area, and they were hoping to visit him in the summer.
Daughter Zipporah Kuria said he was a “very selfless” man, who was a father figure to her friends, and had a passion for education.
She said: “Dad taught us to make the best of everything and even in this situation my family and I are going to try and make the best of everything. He used
to come home and pray for the young people he met. He would never mention them by name, but we would hear him pray for them.
“Friends who came round seemed to look at him as a father figure. Wherever we would go as children we were always getting compliments on our morals, values and respect and that is down to him.
“He was a very selfless man and his legacy will live on in us in everything we do, in our timekeeping, in the way we conduct ourselves in public.
“He taught us not to treat people unfairly – he was a very just man.”
Mr Waithaka worked for a contractor that administered the UN oil for food programme in Iraq, before taking various jobs in the UK as a hospital porter and stock taker and volunteering with Humbercare, before getting a job with Humberside Probation Trust, supervising people carrying out unpaid work as part of a Community Service Order.
Son Ben Kuria, 30, who lives in south London, said his father had been excited at the prospect of having the family over to see him in the summer and was talking about the barbecue he would prepare for them.
He said: “It’s very shocking, really surreal and I am still reminding myself this is what happened. In Kenya we have scores of cousins and so many have personal memories of how dad helped them or supported them or coached them.
“He was hoping to come back at some point in October and we were also hoping to go and see him in the summer.
“He talked about how excited he was and he was thinking about some modifications to his home so he could accommodate what was now a bigger family.”
He taught us not to treat people unfairly – he was a very just man. Zipporah Kuria, daughter of Joseph Waithaka, who died in the Ethiopian Airlines crash