We were very sad to announce the death of David Smart last month. Please see below for a tribute from Tony Brewer and, for those who remember David but couldn’t make the funeral, a copy of the funeral script.
Tribute – David Smart
By Tony Brewer
The trouble with funerals is that they always come too late. How frustrating it is to hear all the fascinating stuff about your late friends when they’re no longer around to confirm, or possibly deny, the stories told about them.
Most of us probably only knew David through his membership of SELHuG, and of our committee, and his leadership of our monthly demonstrations outside Broadcasting House. Who knew him, for example, as the handsome young subaltern who had trained at Sandhurst and subsequently served in West Africa, where he gained the disapproval of his CO by setting up a part-time school for the local kids. Or as the somewhat eccentric geography teacher at Dulwich College, where he was “always at an angle to the College” and gained the disapproval of the Master for telling the pupils that, although the College was a Church of England establishment, they must “always feel free to make up their own minds”. Or as the candidate of the Ecology Party in Dulwich, where he won 1.1 per cent of the vote in the 1979 election but gained notoriety by driving around in the most outrageously decorated and most polluting van on the road!
He was a man of strong convictions and engaging personality. He lay in his coffin with the ashes of his little dog Django, who had died shortly after him, tucked under his arm. He leaves us with his example and our memories. Thank you David.
