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Ken<br />
Swan<br />
in memorium<br />
Words: Dave Swan<br />
This little piece<br />
is dedicated to my<br />
dad as a thank<br />
you for all his<br />
support through<br />
the years from my<br />
sporting days to my<br />
professional career<br />
through to the day<br />
I told him of our<br />
crazy plans to start<br />
a surf magazine.<br />
It was a huge leap<br />
of faith away from<br />
the safety of the<br />
corporate world.<br />
He always believed<br />
in me and supported<br />
me in the pursuit of<br />
my dreams.<br />
I thought the most fitting way to celebrate dad’s<br />
life was to briefly revisit a few of his favourite<br />
sayings.<br />
There were many dad taught me growing up but<br />
three in particular have been ingrained in my<br />
psyche and have indeed steered me throughout<br />
my life:<br />
On the sporting field it was, “Show some<br />
mongrel” – fully commit. Dad loved his sport<br />
and that was passed on to my brother Mike and<br />
I. I guess we wanted to emulate what he had<br />
achieved, I mean there wasn’t that much to live<br />
up to: Queensland footballer, State and National<br />
surf lifesaving surfboard champion, Caption<br />
Coach of the Queensland Men’s Water Polo<br />
team and part of the Commonwealth Games<br />
Squad. Yep, small shoes to fill.<br />
Anyhow dad loved to say to Mike and I, and<br />
later the grandkids, “Show some mongrel.”<br />
Let your opposition know and feel they’re in a<br />
contest. And this was fine when we were playing<br />
water polo but the rule even applied to noncontact<br />
sports. So, it was when I tried my hand<br />
at basketball, I never saw out a full game before<br />
being fouled out. Phoebe (my daughter) knows<br />
something of this, the feisty little thing she is.<br />
Another saying dad loved was, “Silence is<br />
golden but sometimes it is yellow”<br />
meaning simply, speak your mind and don’t<br />
remain silent if something needs to be said.<br />
Dad’s brothers know something of that saying.<br />
Dad was never shy in letting people know what<br />
he thought, that too applied to the sporting field.<br />
The final saying he particularly loved was,<br />
“Actions speak louder than words”. To<br />
that end, nothing I say today will truly convey my<br />
love for dad. I tried to show him each and every<br />
day and I am pretty certain he knew how I felt.<br />
There’s also another one, in fact there was a<br />
heap of them, but it was, “If you’re going to<br />
do a job, do it properly”. So I am going to<br />
give it my best not to get upset and get through<br />
this little speech, “show some mongrel” and not<br />
be a wuss.<br />
The truth is dad taught me so many things and<br />
the lessons didn’t end as a kid. He kept sharing<br />
his wisdom and knowledge with me right up<br />
until the final few days.<br />
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