I met John when I came to St. Hill in 1979 as a staff member at the Church. We always had a lot of fun and would get together with Mary and Martin on Friday nights every so often and we all had a good time. At one point Larry Byrnes , from Boston and ces't moi, the Kiwi, and we were working helping John on the weekends building John's burger bar in downtown East Grinstead, called CHAD's, which I understand had a pretty good run.

John took me down to Brighton one lovely summer Sunday and to my surprise he had a catamaran down at the beach. We spent one fabulous beautiful Sunday afternoon tearing along on light breezes and every so often the  cat would get up above about the 45 degree angle and it would just keep going up and over we went. We would then spend about the next 20 minutes righting the cat for the next great run at exhilarating speed in gentle breezes. John was about 40 and I was about 30 at the time. Talk about pleasure moments which you remember for a lifetime that day was one. 

When John would come across to Florida if I was in Clearwater on the Gulf Coast we would get together until I finally moved here full time and we saw far more of each other after that. 

See you again soon John!

Paul Mannix

Clearwater, Florida

He gave good advice and being an engineer he was a practical man. John was always very direct and kind and I loved him for it.