JohnDKeller
18th Dec 2005, 23:26
MICHAEL HANCOCK 2 August 1923 – 9 December 2005
Michael was born in August 1923 in the south of England. He was the
second son in a middle class family with live-in household help. His
father, uncles and cousins were all in various aspects of the
insurance business; and when Michael left school his father arranged a
job for him as a filing clerk in an insurance company. By now the
Second World War was beginning and Michael, unimpressed with clerking
but too young to enlist in the armed forces, joined the meteorological
service and was posted to a Royal Air Force bomber station in the East
of England where he was part of a team forecasting weather over long
range bomber targets in Germany. So began his interest in flying.
When old enough to do so, he enlisted in the Fleet Air Arm of the
Royal Navy. After initial training in England, in August 1943, aged
20, he sailed on the great passenger liner the Queen Mary, which was
operating as a troop ship squeezing in 4 berths to a single cabin,
from Southampton to America. There he learned to fly, at an airbase
outside Detroit, before transferring to Pensacola in Florida for six
months training as a fighter pilot. A year later, just as the great
Allied D-day invasion of the beaches of Normandy was being launched,
Michael was sailing from England as a newly qualified fighter pilot
aboard the British Pacific Fleet aircraft carrier HMS Victorious. From
the British naval base in Ceylon, early in 1945, the fleet twice
sailed to attack and disable the Japanese held oil refineries at
Palembang in Sumatra. It was on those missions that Michael gained his
first experience of combat, of being shot at, and of losing colleagues
to enemy action. From Ceylon, Michael sailed with the British Pacific
Fleet to Australia where the fleet joined forces with the American
navy for action in the Pacific. In a history of the British Pacific
Fleet there is a photograph of a Japanese Zero fighter lined up in the
gun sights of a Corsair with the caption "from the gun camera of
Flight Lieutenant M. Hancock". For his military service Michael was
awarded the Distinguished Service Cross.
Demobilised after the war, and less than thrilled to be working in a
factory assembling Ronson cigarette lighters, Michael accepted the
suggestion of his father that he should travel to New Zealand to work
with an old friend of his father who had a small engineering business
in Auckland making instrumentation and controls. His fiancé from
England joined him and there they set up home and had two sons. Later,
invited by a major supplier of instrumentation and controls to join
their company in Australia, Michael and his family moved to Sydney. It
was from there in the late 1970's that the company sent him first to
Hong Kong and then in 1979 to Manila to open a representative office.
And that was when I first met Michael and where our friendship began,
over a refreshing gin tonic or two at the bar of the Manila Club in
Felipe Agoncillo Street. Does that sound familiar?
Later, Michael was posted by his company to manage their factory and
operations in Singapore, and after that to be based in Hong Kong in
charge of regional sales; and throughout those years, whenever he
could take leave, he was a regular visitor to Manila as my house guest.
When Michael was posted to Asia his wife was not prepared to leave
Sydney and over the years they lead increasingly separate lives. After
her death he sold his home in Sydney and committed himself to Asia.
He was fortunate to be accepted by Marieta and retired from Hong Kong
in 1988 to set up home first in Merville Park in Manila and later to
buy land and build in Baguio where he felt the climate would be more
congenial.
For some years he drove down often from Baguio to Manila to work as a
consultant on waste water treatment projects. His stroke four years
ago, which left him severly paralysed down the left side and confined
to a wheel chair, was a great blow to a man who had never before been
hospitalized and who valued his independence. But he didn't give up.
Supported and encouraged by Marieta and her relative, Fanny, who
devoted themselves 24 hours a day to his care, he stubbornly fought to
regain strength and mobility and motivated himself with the goal of
one day being able to travel to Manila and onwards to Australia or
England. His expeditions to Bauang to the Beer Bust were part of that
program to prove to himself and to us that he could travel.
I have valued my friendship with Michael. He was a sociable man who
loved conversation and good company. He had a keen wit and a quick
sense of humour. He had an unusually enquiring and questioning mind,
always ready to ask `Why is that so?', `Is there a better way?' rather
than passively accepting the status quo. He was also a kind and
generous man, investing his time and often money to help others to
solve their problems and improve their situation. Of course, the
Michael we all knew was also argumentative and could sometimes explode
on a short fuse. Inside that sometimes angry exterior was, I think, an
idealist continually frustrated, sometimes to rage, by the refusal of
the world to act in the way he thought would make it a better place.
Michael, we shall miss you, but I hope you have now found that better
place.
(Bill Stone, The Red Lion, Baguio, 17 December 2005)
Michael was born in August 1923 in the south of England. He was the
second son in a middle class family with live-in household help. His
father, uncles and cousins were all in various aspects of the
insurance business; and when Michael left school his father arranged a
job for him as a filing clerk in an insurance company. By now the
Second World War was beginning and Michael, unimpressed with clerking
but too young to enlist in the armed forces, joined the meteorological
service and was posted to a Royal Air Force bomber station in the East
of England where he was part of a team forecasting weather over long
range bomber targets in Germany. So began his interest in flying.
When old enough to do so, he enlisted in the Fleet Air Arm of the
Royal Navy. After initial training in England, in August 1943, aged
20, he sailed on the great passenger liner the Queen Mary, which was
operating as a troop ship squeezing in 4 berths to a single cabin,
from Southampton to America. There he learned to fly, at an airbase
outside Detroit, before transferring to Pensacola in Florida for six
months training as a fighter pilot. A year later, just as the great
Allied D-day invasion of the beaches of Normandy was being launched,
Michael was sailing from England as a newly qualified fighter pilot
aboard the British Pacific Fleet aircraft carrier HMS Victorious. From
the British naval base in Ceylon, early in 1945, the fleet twice
sailed to attack and disable the Japanese held oil refineries at
Palembang in Sumatra. It was on those missions that Michael gained his
first experience of combat, of being shot at, and of losing colleagues
to enemy action. From Ceylon, Michael sailed with the British Pacific
Fleet to Australia where the fleet joined forces with the American
navy for action in the Pacific. In a history of the British Pacific
Fleet there is a photograph of a Japanese Zero fighter lined up in the
gun sights of a Corsair with the caption "from the gun camera of
Flight Lieutenant M. Hancock". For his military service Michael was
awarded the Distinguished Service Cross.
Demobilised after the war, and less than thrilled to be working in a
factory assembling Ronson cigarette lighters, Michael accepted the
suggestion of his father that he should travel to New Zealand to work
with an old friend of his father who had a small engineering business
in Auckland making instrumentation and controls. His fiancé from
England joined him and there they set up home and had two sons. Later,
invited by a major supplier of instrumentation and controls to join
their company in Australia, Michael and his family moved to Sydney. It
was from there in the late 1970's that the company sent him first to
Hong Kong and then in 1979 to Manila to open a representative office.
And that was when I first met Michael and where our friendship began,
over a refreshing gin tonic or two at the bar of the Manila Club in
Felipe Agoncillo Street. Does that sound familiar?
Later, Michael was posted by his company to manage their factory and
operations in Singapore, and after that to be based in Hong Kong in
charge of regional sales; and throughout those years, whenever he
could take leave, he was a regular visitor to Manila as my house guest.
When Michael was posted to Asia his wife was not prepared to leave
Sydney and over the years they lead increasingly separate lives. After
her death he sold his home in Sydney and committed himself to Asia.
He was fortunate to be accepted by Marieta and retired from Hong Kong
in 1988 to set up home first in Merville Park in Manila and later to
buy land and build in Baguio where he felt the climate would be more
congenial.
For some years he drove down often from Baguio to Manila to work as a
consultant on waste water treatment projects. His stroke four years
ago, which left him severly paralysed down the left side and confined
to a wheel chair, was a great blow to a man who had never before been
hospitalized and who valued his independence. But he didn't give up.
Supported and encouraged by Marieta and her relative, Fanny, who
devoted themselves 24 hours a day to his care, he stubbornly fought to
regain strength and mobility and motivated himself with the goal of
one day being able to travel to Manila and onwards to Australia or
England. His expeditions to Bauang to the Beer Bust were part of that
program to prove to himself and to us that he could travel.
I have valued my friendship with Michael. He was a sociable man who
loved conversation and good company. He had a keen wit and a quick
sense of humour. He had an unusually enquiring and questioning mind,
always ready to ask `Why is that so?', `Is there a better way?' rather
than passively accepting the status quo. He was also a kind and
generous man, investing his time and often money to help others to
solve their problems and improve their situation. Of course, the
Michael we all knew was also argumentative and could sometimes explode
on a short fuse. Inside that sometimes angry exterior was, I think, an
idealist continually frustrated, sometimes to rage, by the refusal of
the world to act in the way he thought would make it a better place.
Michael, we shall miss you, but I hope you have now found that better
place.
(Bill Stone, The Red Lion, Baguio, 17 December 2005)