Stu's Stories as at 2024

P a g e | 78 I repeat what I said earlier... The greatest vision you will ever see is the look on a child’s face when he/she achieves something they thought was unachievable. Regardless of the costs, you cannot put a price on that! The Other Side of the Coin with Kids Working with kids is amongst the greatest pleasure I have had in life; but for all the good one can do, there can also be heartache. A few years before I retired, we had a boy about 18-years-old transfer his apprenticeship to the place where I worked. His father was a representative for a merchant that supplied some of our products; a larger-than-life character with a mass of white hair and a very charismatic personality. On the other hand, the boy was slight, very quiet and seemed quite withdrawn. I felt sorry for him and invited him to come sailing with us; so one Saturday he came racing on my yacht and seemed to thoroughly enjoy himself. As I already had a number of boys and one adult as crew (always had one adult crewman for safety reasons), I could not take him on permanently. So I introduced him to some friends who had just bought a new yacht and needed an extra hand. When I saw how he fitted in I relaxed and stopped worrying so much about him as he appeared to be thoroughly enjoying it all. After races we all congregated in the clubhouse for presentations. One afternoon I noticed him drinking what I thought was a glass of Coke, but found out it was rum and coke. I realised immediately that he had problems, as an 18-year-old should not be able to consume a number of rum and coke drinks and still be lucid enough to talk too unless he had been drinking for a number of years. This worried me greatly, but he shrugged it off when I tried to talk to him about it so I didn’t press the issue…just kept an eye on him. However, he seemed OK; since taking to sailing he appeared to be happier at work and at the club, therefore I relaxed and concentrated on the boys sailing with me…teaching them to work as a team and develop confidence within themselves. It was only a couple of years later that health forced me to retire. Then, only a couple of years after that, I received word that this boy’s father had come home to find his son hanging in the garage…he would have been about 21 or 22. I know it could be said that it was not my responsibility, but I will always wonder that if I had taken him onto my yacht (regardless of the overcrowding it would have been) that I may have led him out of the depression that led to his suicide. He had learned to hide his true feelings well, but there were still glimpses of those early signs of loneliness that led me to take him sailing in the first place. I never learned if they found a specific reason for his suicide. However, he was a quiet, shy, introverted boy who had managed to hide his feelings and suffer quietly. Could I have helped him? Maybe. I will never forget and go to my grave wondering.