MY FATHER
THERE ARE NOT many men I know who can speak easily or lovingly about their fathers. Dad and I had our fierce clashes over my life, but there was never, ever a doubt that he loved me, that there wasn’t anything he wouldn’t do for me.
Dad himself was the beloved son of Ellen and Kurt Leser. Born in Berlin in 1925, he was three when his parents separated, eight when Adolf Hitler came to power. Throughout those early years, up until the time he left Germany in 1939, he felt the rising menace of Nazism all around him. A sad, lonely, troubled boy, forced to flee a country that didn’t want him on the eve of World War II.
He was 14 when he arrived in Auckland and for him this was the true beginning of his life. This was his Paradise Found and everything that had preceded it he tried to erase from his mind. And so this traumatised child began a stunning, marvellous process of reinvention. He was no longer the German Jewish outcast, he was now a New Zealander with freedoms and new friends and a sparkling harbour to sail on and a mighty football team that he could exult in.
These early years of loneliness and exclusion came to define Dad, because from this place of deepest longing and hurt he acquired a ferocious determination to prove himself in the world. He also acquired a love of people that was akin to a force of nature. These impulses were less to do with networking than they were to do with matchmaking – matchmaking with a huge multiplier effect that helped so many people around the world forge new bonds.
The very core of Dad was kindness. The way he thought about people, put them together, sent them encouraging notes, boosted their faith in themselves, mentored them for bigger things. This was his lifeblood – human relations, the personal touch – and these instincts propelling him around the globe, feeding his sense of self, filling him with confidence and good humour, giving him a sense that life really was a party with his name on every list.
Our last conversation was on Sunday night, October 11, two days before he died. I told him what a great man he was, what a great father he had been, what a great friend he had been to so many people; what a great life he had lived and how much I had always loved him.
I then asked him whether he was ready to go. And he squeezed my hand and said: “Yes, darling.” – because he always called me darling. He said: “Yes, I feel very grateful for the life I’ve had.”
And Dad, we are so very grateful to you, too. Thank you.