Coming home

It was not until Peter Ward’s death that his son Mat realised what a rich life, despite work and financial struggles, his dad had enjoyed.

When Peter Ward died suddenly, just after his 73rd birthday in 2003, there was no obituary for him in the newspaper. In the eyes of the world, he was a failure. He had left behind a string of broken business ventures, countless money-making schemes that had gone nowhere, more than $100,000 in debt (which came as a complete surprise to his widow), and a small insurance policy that just about covered the cost of his funeral.

“My father and mother were living in a rented house after he’d lost our family home through bankruptcy,” says Peter’s son, Mat Ward. “Dad had also been living off credit cards, applying for new ones to help pay off the old ones. Of course, he couldn’t even afford to buy a car. Don’t get me wrong – I loved him and I knew he loved me back – but all I saw him for was a penniless failure.”

Mat was living in Melbourne when he heard the news of his father’s death in England. His sister, Josephine, telephoned him: “It’s Dad… he’s dead.” She asked Mat how soon he could return home to help with the funeral arrangements. “Knowing that I would be speaking at his funeral, I thought about what I’d be expected to say,” recalls Mat, “but it wasn’t easy.” All he could think about was how his father had failed to achieve success in life. “If I was going to celebrate my father’s life, not just mourn his passing, I had no idea where to begin.”

Mat had 30 hours to think about it; his flight from Melbourne would take him to England via Singapore. “An international flight is a choreographed circus of distractions. Flight attendants ply you with food and drink, and there are limitless channels of music and movies to distract you from the fact that you’re trapped.” Ironically, Mat found he had no need for these diversions. As he began to review his father’s life, he could hardly suppress the memories that bubbled up; soon, he was oblivious to everything around him.

“The first thing that came to mind,” he says, “was the fact that my father was always smiling. He was never happier than when a room full of people were all laughing along with him at his jokes and stories. He could keep them spellbound.” To his surprise, Mat realised for the first time how much he envied his father’s gift. He remembered too how his father never minded telling stories mocking himself. There was the time, when coming home from the pub, he reached to change gear in his car only to realise he wasn’t actually driving – he was walking and had left his car behind. Then there was the night he was picked up late by his wife, Joyce, and fell asleep in the car. “Mum stopped at a Chinese restaurant to grab some takeaway food and when she came out, the car was gone. Dad had woken up, wondered why he was sleeping in the passenger seat, moved over to the driver’s side and driven home.”

His father probably wasn’t the worst driver in the country, says Mat, “but anyone who accepted a ride with him knew he was a contender.” He had taken his driving test in the army and all he’d had to do was drive a jeep into a field and back it out again. Mat is amazed he passed even that simple manoeuvre. “He had the attitude that little things like indicators, give-way signs, speed limits and lines down the middle of the road were optional. Alternatively, they were only for people who didn’t know where they were going.” Mat’s father never planned his route in advance, trusting blind luck and optimism would get him where he needed to go. “And somehow it always did, though not necessarily as quickly or directly as most of us would have got there,” he says. Mat admits that for some time he was terrified of being a passenger in his dad’s car, but realised Peter had been driving that way all his life and had never had anything worse than an occasional scrape or knock when parking. “I often wondered how he could have survived so long without getting into a serious accident,” says Mat. “I think it was his attitude. He would set out completely oblivious to where he was going but completely secure that he was going to get there. My dad’s attitude was a kind of protective armour.”

Perhaps that attitude came from his childhood. Peter Ward, born in 1930, grew up in a small village on the outskirts of Huddersfield, a textile town in Yorkshire, England. He was just nine years old when World War II began, and along with his parents, a brother and three sisters, he had to live with food rationing and the appalling loss of life that touched every household in Britain. Those formative years, from 1939 to 1945, bred a generation that was taught never to complain – to simply get on with life and to make the very best of it. Most of all, they learned never to give up.

By the time Mat’s father was conscripted into the army he was just old enough to have missed the war. At his camp in North Africa, says Mat, “the photos show him smiling and having fun with his mates.” In fact, he seemed to have been born with the gift of making friends. Back home, he played rugby with the Huddersfield YMCA and formed a core of friendships that lasted a lifetime. Mat’s mother once told him that his father had broken every bone in his fingers playing, but that had never stopped him.

Peter’s enjoyment of life found its greatest expression when he married and raised a family with Joyce. Mat particularly remembers how every Christmas his father would drive his wife and children around to visit relatives. “We’d gather at a different house every year and he’d tell his stories and sing Christmas songs and we’d all be very merry.” Mat’s sister Josephine tells the story of the time she was talking to Peter on the phone and happened to mention her husband was struggling with building a carport. “Twenty minutes later Dad turned up at her house in overalls with his toolkit in hand and spent the rest of the day helping,” says Mat.

The other thing Mat remembered was how hard his father had worked all his life. When Mat was a small boy the family never seemed to want for anything. “Before I finished high school Dad had taken us on trips to Spain, Canada and Florida. He’d won the trip to Miami by being one of the best salesmen in England.” The firm he worked for sold roofing, flooring and other industrial maintenance materials and Mat’s father had been tireless in marketing their wares. But after a disagreement with company management, he’d parted ways, and by the time Mat left high school things had started to change. “Dad sold our large house and we moved into a smaller one. Suddenly he began trying lots of money-making ventures, one week convinced that Herbalife was the way forward and the next selling computers from his car.”

Always devising schemes that would return his family to the wealth they had once known, Peter was never despondent about going out to chase new opportunities and hunt down ventures. Mat and his father would speak by phone every few weeks and he’d always tell his son about a new plan or scheme that was guaranteed to be ‘the big one’, the one that would bring the big pay-off. “He was always planning how to spend the huge amounts of money he knew he was going to make, and always certain that success lay just around the corner.” However, he never quite got the hang of looking after money and never again attained the success he’d enjoyed as a younger man. Was this self-delusion or a character flaw? Neither, it seems. Mat’s father had simply wanted to spare his family from worry. He never told them how much money he’d borrowed and lost because he didn’t want them to take on his burdens. He never complained or showed them his own moments of self-doubt. 

As Mat continued drawing on his store of memories, the list of his father’s good points grew longer and longer. “When we touched down in Singapore, the strangest sense came over me,” he says. “It was a kind of electric, tingling feeling at the realisation that I’d come to understand something really important about my dad. Something really good,” he says. “I had realised that Dad wasn’t a loser or a failure at all. He was certainly a dreamer, but his dreams propelled him through the world and fed his optimism; they gave him the strength to continue no matter what went wrong along the way. How could he be a failure when he never gave up? How could he be a loser when he was constantly searching? Losers quit and failures stop trying. That is something that would never have occurred to Dad.”

Mat’s journey wasn’t quite over. He had one more step to take and there was one more realisation to come. It came to him while he spoke at his father’s funeral. There were more than 100 people present, including Peter’s immediate family, his nieces and nephews, his old rugby crowd, people from the village where he lived, old colleagues and drinking buddies. “As I read Dad’s eulogy, I looked at the faces of his friends and family,” says Mat. “Many were crying at his loss, others were laughing at the memories of him, and that was the moment I realised something else. I realised that my dad wasn’t poor. In fact, he was the richest man I have ever known. His wealth couldn’t be measured in financial terms or material assets, but nobody could count up the laughs and tears, the love and the memories that everyone at his funeral gave so freely. I can only dream of being a fraction as rich when my own time comes. The roads may now be just a little bit safer in his part of the world, but they’re certainly a lot less interesting.”

 

Words: Gillian Tucker. Photography: Andrew Lehmann.