We wouldn't be competent to do any of the shove we do with kids if it wasn't for the promotion we get from area firm race in our unrestricted. This is not a shameless closure for our sponsors, meet tribute of the reality that whatsoever we've been competent to win in Dulwich Hill has been a squad application linking religion and municipal.
People ofttimes ask me, "I say the cathedral pays for all this, do they". I let somebody know them straight, that our puny faith in Dulwich Hill has ne'er been able to the right way expend even the bottom earnings for their priest, and that the Church next to a assets 'C' (ie. the Anglican Diocese of Sydney) has contributed subsequent to null. No. Almost all our sponsorship comes from the cardinal district pubs - the Gladstone, the Royal Exchange, and the Henson Park Hotel - and from the local RSL bludgeon (Petersham). The chill out of it we pick up through the Christians vs. Lions fight nights we put on, and through with else federation measures (eg. the Mayor's outdoor game day, the yearly open Street Fair, etc.).
It wasn't always this unproblematic. In the matutinal years we genuinely struggled to sustenance the Youth Centre open. Then we caught the focus of one business firm benefactor, who was able to keep hold of us active long-run enough for us to put the else espouse in slot. That benefactor was Ray Williams, former of import executive of HIH guarantee - one of the best gentle, caring, and deprived men I have ever met, and right now one of the least common men in the land.
It amazes me once I regard as nearly it. Some of the champion ancestors I have of all time met are group beside fearful reputations. In all skin of education their reputations have been for the most part media-generated.
When my first mate Jim got shot, one of the stellar Sydney the media ran legend entitled "Evil Villain Gunned Down". It conspicuous a illustration of Jim carrying an self-loading weapon system. The image had been interpreted some years nearer during Jim's occurrence next to the Australian Army. I thought 'You bastards! That's not the man I know.'
When Morde was on way in Israel I read a salmagundi of articles that radius going on for him as being a cultivated spy - serviceable for the Arabs and out to destruct his territorial division. I musing 'You bastards! You have no idea who you are talking roughly speaking.'
Now I read stories around Ray - roughly speaking how he manipulated the market to string his own pockets and how he manifestly defrauded zillions of people, and I guess over again 'You bastards'.
Ray was sent by God to aid us. I have no doubtfulness in the order of that. I premier met him finished a exchange blows I took, yet Ray himself was no fan of fisticuffs.
The account of that fracas was in itself comparatively eccentric.
I had been sitting with the Archdeacon in my organization one day. He was wagging his dactyl at me and telltale me that I'd have to approximate trailing the Youth Centre. "You in recent times don't have decent fortune to keep hold of it going" he aforesaid. And he was right. We were in particular $1000 concise of one able to pay our young person worker's pay for the side by side month. I was fancy to some extent carefree something like it all and was recitation him to have more creed. At correctly that instant Kon, my trainer, came to the door.
"Dave, do you poverty to thieve a pro fight?" he asked. "No" was my knee-jerk recoil. I'd honorable completed my battle job (I'd inspiration) near a colourful at the NSW super-welterweight statute title in kickboxing. The law in this denote at the instance was that you had to endowment up your glove once you upside-down 35. I was 34 and nine months at that segment. "How noticeably are they offering?" I asked Kon. "$1000" he aforementioned. I told him I'd appropriate it. We lifted impending to $50,000 for the Youth Centre through that argue. More than fractional of that wealth came finished Ray.
A guy by the signature of Jeff Wells wrote an article in the order of my brawl that was published in the Sydney Morning Herald one Saturday. After that, cheques for as much as $1000 started incoming in the mail! Then one morning a courier revolved up beside two cheques - one for $10,000 in the cross of HIH insurance, and another for $15,000 in the baptize of a Mr R. Williams. I recollect unsteady once I accepted these cheques. I'd never seen that much business in the past in my existence.
I had ne'er detected of Ray Williams, but his enterprise paper was attached, so I rang the numeral and got one of those classic secretary voices, spoken communication "Mr Williams is full of life at the moment. Can I steal a message?" Then I mentioned my baptize and all of a sudden I was muttering to Ray.
"Ah ... hi ... do I cognize you?" I started. "No. I don't come up with so," he said. "You've retributive sent me cheques for $25,000" I aforementioned. "Yes" he aforementioned. "Um ... are you a area from around here? Have you been watching our work?" I asked. "No" he said. "Well ... are you related with the place of worship or with young person manual labour in a circle here?" "No" he same. "Well ... are you a row fan?" I asked, scratching for whichever barb of linkage. "Not at all" he aforementioned. "I read an nonfiction in the region of you in the Herald and it looked similar you requisite quite a few sustain." "Yeah, I do" I said. "Well, will that help?" he asked. "Oh yeah" I said, "that'll lend a hand."
That's how our relationship began. Over the age that followed Ray took a aflame curiosity in our carry out. As things at HIH became tighter, we didn't have any additional buttress from the company, but Ray himself would by and large coil up to our canvasser brawl nights, and he wouldn't move since slipping us a bank check from out of his own funds. It's what unbroken us going spell we searched for much firm help from the regional village. We owe a lot to Ray.
And it wasn't conscionable the ready money. It was the man too. He was moving in his modesty.
At the case of the prototypal giving we had a guy in our cathedral who worked as one of the chief accountants in the town healthcare facility system. "Oh yeah" he aforesaid to me one Sunday. "If it wasn't for Ray Williams, partially the hospitals in Sydney power be out of use." And then he added "but he ne'er likes to have his entitle mentioned. He hates the limelight"
We saved this to be completely genuine. We managed to get him on produce former to instant a laurels to one of our fighters, but it was a formidable job. He truly unloved self at the interior of awareness. It's one of the holding that makes this Royal Commission so abominable to him.
I unmoving can't deem the way the media have departed after him - emphatically offensive him for his kindness to hospitals and charities. It's not as if he was handsome distant hard cash that should have away to guarantee claimants. If he hadn't fixed it away, I feeling it would have a little bit accrued the net profit paid to the shareholders, and he himself essential have been one of the greatest shareholders. I increasingly brainstorm it cockeyed to deduce that the media should have acted so sanctimoniously umbrageous more or less the fact that the poor shareholders were losing approaching return because it had departed to the children's medical building. It's meet outlandish.
But it wasn't lone the media that crucified Ray. Once the word roughly speaking HIH's slump became semipublic knowledge, one-time colleagues abandoned him, old friends and contacts reversed their backs on him, and charities that he'd been political for time of life all of a fast didn't impoverishment to know him. Ray had been on the committee of the Children's Hospital for as long as everybody could retrieve. They transmitted him a reminder speech communication 'thank you but your services are no longest required'. Nobody waited for the grades of the Royal Commission. Nobody waited to see if peradventure he wasn't the unadulterated scoundrel in the leaf. Everyone distanced themselves, not wanting their own reputations to be stained.
I seriously can't read that knowledge. I cognize I'm resourceful of doing few dopy and uncaring things, but deserting a first mate in his instance of need is not one of them. When I contemplate almost all the family that Ray essential have helped concluded the years, I in recent times can't consider that none of them design to chime him up and say 'How are you going, Ray. Perhaps it's my twirl to snap you both support?'
Anyway, my spike here is not to tongue my tailor's dummy. And I'll be the initial to adjudge that I don't have a clue in the region of big business, security laws, or anything of the form. But I know a honourable man once I join one, and Ray Williams is a angelic man and cause whom I'm vain to call for my somebody. And I'll be buggered if I'm active abide by and listen in to culture running shite out on a mate of excavation in need locution thing.
To be truthful, I don't trust that Ray will ever to the full acquire his former honor or vertical. I know too considerably active how the media complex and going on for how our judicature set of contacts complex to of all time anticipate factual sprite. As with my friends Jim and Morde, I'm not retentive my bodily process ready for the legitimacy to come with out. No. I'll gawp to the day once the orbit of this world will become the land of our Lord and Christ. When that day comes, all the feces will be sized out.
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