FAMILY WIPED OUT ON A PERFECT DAY
SOON TO BE MARRIED RICHARD AND EMMA WANTED TO GIVE THEIR KIDS A HOLIDAY TO REMEMBER. SADLY, IT WOULD BE THEIR LAST, WRITES
The elegant wedding invitations announcing the marriage of Richard Cousins and his bride-tobe Emma Bowden had been posted just days before the couple left on a holiday of a lifetime. Guests were invited to London’s exclusive Hurlingham Club on the second-last Friday of July.
On the banks of the Thames, Hurlingham is one of the world’s top private members clubs, a haven of tradition frequented by those who don’t need to flaunt their wealth. It is where the Duchess of Cambridge and her sister Pippa play tennis. Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, is its patron.
Richard and Emma were comfortable in such upper-class British circles but neither were toffs. He was the multi-millionaire boss of the world’s biggest catering company, Compass Group. Described as a nononsense businessman, he was born in Leeds, Yorkshire, and got his start with a maths degree at working-class Sheffield University in northern England.
Her dad was veteran British MP Gerry Bowden, who served for nine years in Margaret Thatcher’s Tory government in the 1980s and into the early 1990s. But she was a single mum to 11-year-old Heather, bringing up her daughter while working as the calm and clear-headed arts editor at UK celebrity magazine where she was known as the Grace Kelly of the office. Theirs was a love story that had blossomed later in life but it was to be tragically cut short when Richard, 58, his sons Will, 23, and Ed, 25, and Emma, 48, and Heather died along with pilot Gareth Morgan, 44, in the seaplane crash in the Hawkesbury River on New Year’s Eve.
The couple planned the trip to Australia to follow the cricket but also as a form of team bonding ahead of the wedding, where the boys were set to be best men and Heather was to be bridesmaid.
Richard’s first wife of 32 years, Caroline, died of an aggressive form of cancer in 2015 just six weeks after it was diagnosed – she had urged him to find someone else.
A month or so later, he went to meet some old university mates at a pub in Twickenham, a riverside suburb in London’s southwest. Emma, whose ex-partner Alex had moved to Prague, chose the same time to have a drink with friends. “He went out with great university pals for a drink after Caroline died and she (Emma) was at the next table. It was a total coincidence. He was immediately besotted,” Richard’s neighbour Caroline Capper recalls this week. The couple moved in together in his south London home in a leafy part of Tooting but were regular visitors to Richard’s family home in the close-knit Buckinghamshire village of Hyde Heath, where he had lived next door to the Capper family for 18 years. Heather began at south London’s Graveney School when the academic year started in September.
At the same time, Richard shocked the UK corporate world by announcing he would be retiring in March this year after 11 years as chief executive of Compass Group, which supplies food to events, from Wimbledon tennis championships to prisons. He had more than doubled its revenue to more than $22.6 billion a year.
Compass operates in about 50 countries, employs more than 550,000 people and serves more than 5.5 billion meals a year.
In 2017, Richard earned £5.6 million ($9.7 million) but he wanted to start a new life with Emma. It was time for him to move on.
As they planned their wedding and their engagement party, which was also scheduled for March, the couple indulged his passion for cricket. Whether on the greens of English villages or in international stadiums, Richard was a cricket tragic who was being lined up for one of the sport’s dream jobs as an independent director of the England and Wales Cricket Board later this year.
With the Ashes up for grabs, the only place to be was Australia and Richard used his contacts to secure seats in the members’ reserve section of the Noble Stand at the SCG for himself and his sons. Compass used to do the catering for the SCG.
Like their dad, Will and Ed played local cricket with varying success. They were each building profiles in their chosen areas. Will moved into politics, working as head of press for Open Britain, a pro-EU campaign group set up in the aftermath of the Brexit vote.
Ed had recently graduated with a history degree from the University of St Andrews, where he had been president of the mixed martial arts club. A fan of trekking and travelling,
he had completed the 170km Tour du Mont Blanc through Switzerland, Italy and France.
In Sydney, their rooms at the Park Hyatt overlooked two of the city’s tourist icons, the Harbour and the Opera House, and the families booked another must-do for tourists – a seaplane trip.
Wealthy enough to take the $535per-head fly-dine option, they booked with Sydney Seaplanes for the lunch trip on December 31 from Rose Bay up to Cottage Point Inn.
It’s a 20-minute flight but the restaurant, tucked away in the Kuring-gai Chase National Park north of Sydney, seems a world away.
They took off from Rose Bay at about 11.15am with experienced pilot Gareth Morgan at the controls and Richard snapping scenic shots with his camera around his neck.
In Hyde Heath, Caroline Capper and her husband John were thrilled when their wedding invitation slipped into their letterbox on December 30.
The next day they woke to the news of Sydney’s seaplane tragedy.
“I just can’t compute what has happened. I look out the windows from our house to theirs and realise that they are all gone … they are all dead,” Caroline Capper says.
“Just today I went to the village shop and the lady who runs it was in tears. The whole cricket club turned out for them at the local pub on New Year’s Day … we were all very close, good friends.”
Instead of looking forward to the wedding, their families are preparing for their funerals. Richard’s older brothers, Simon and Andrew, arrived in Sydney late this week to arrange for the bodies to go home.
Emma’s dad released a statement on behalf of himself and his other children, Kate, Rebecca and Oliver, saying the family was devastated.
The heartbroken parents of Gareth Morgan, who had 10,000 hours of flying experience and wanted to fly for Qantas, arrived in Sydney from Toronto yesterday. Dudley and Orlis Morgan issued a statement describing their “wonderful” and “caring son”.
Sydney Seaplanes operations remain grounded while the Australian Transport Safety Bureau, the Civil Aviation Safety Authority and police investigate why the de Havilland Canada DHC-2 Beaver fell from the sky as it banked above Jerusalem Bay to head back to Sydney.
The mangled wreck was retrieved on Thursday to be examined by experts with a preliminary report expected by the end of the month.
As the three seats booked for the Cousins men remained empty at the SCG on the first day of the final Test as a mark of respect, back in England, the cricket clubs which were Richard Cousins’ first love paid their own tributes.
From Wellington Cricket Club in Shropshire, where he used to bat for the second team in the late 1980s, to Surrey County Cricket Club, where he was a member, to Hyde Heath Cricket Club, where he was a committee member and part-time player, Richard was remembered as a great supporter and down-to-earth bloke.
When Hyde Heath Cricket Club unveiled its new scoreboard in 2016, they dedicated it, in part, to his late wife Caroline.
“Everyone will have read about Richard the businessman and how successful he had been,” John Capper says. “Richard, the man, the villager and cricketer, seemed far removed from this persona.
“Most top bosses are seen as selfimportant, arrogant and opinionated, and, although successful in their spheres, not necessarily as successful in their personal lives. Richard was the
opposite.”
I just can’t compute what has happened. I look out the windows from our house to theirs and realise that they are all gone … they are all dead Family friend Caroline Capper