Dave Fryer – ‘Words’ from a Colleague and Friend Read at David's Memorial Service, 24th Feb 2015. Some spoke to me about this after the service so I hope it's ok to post the full text here..... Dave and I first met at the Prudential in 1986. I had been there a year and Dave joined as a fresh-faced graduate and we were put together in the same team – in fact it was part of the Pru ethos that a new graduate was put under the wing of one who had started the year before. So, for his sins, he got me. With his easy-going personality we hit it off straight away and as he proved himself more than capable at his job he quickly established himself throughout the whole team. The Pru had a ‘work hard / play hard’ mentality and Dave was more than happy to do both. Whether this was ‘Pay Day Meals’ or ‘After Work’ drinks he ensured that he was right in the mix. At Christmas it was traditional for management to put a tenner into the whip to buy drinks for staff but it was also traditional for the youngest member of staff to hold the whip at the bar. What were they thinking? It seemed that for each person arriving, Dave would buy them a drink out of the whip and get one for himself at the same time. Never has anyone been so happy being delegated that task. 1. Added following earlier tributes - I had to play against 'that dyed pink t-shirt' on several occasions on the squash court. We had tremendous battles in the Pru Squash leagues in our attempts to get into the top ladder of 12 players. Always, always a very close game. 2. Added following earlier tributes - did anyone else notice that Dave dropped his consonants when he'd had a couple of drinks? Well known for it at 'after work' drinks :-) Dave and I also dabbled in Penny Shares during those few years at the Pru. Only a few hundred pounds invested. We were rubbish at it. Every one we picked would instantly plummet with many only barely recovering to a point where we would only make a small loss. One of those, Hong Kong Pacific, went through the floor .. so much so that it wasn’t even worth selling – so we kept them and forgot about it. So, the words that sum Dave up in those ‘Pru Years’ could perhaps be ‘FUN, MISCHIEVOUS and (in terms of Penny Shares) NAÏVE’. For someone who would in later years become an FD in his own company this didn’t bode well. As he and Carc travelled off to Australia, had got married, and he had taken to contracting instead of permanent work, we had gone our separate ways and maintained ‘Christmas Card contact’. Once back in the UK, he had started work at DMS and it was there that he met, amongst others, Simon Lamb and Shaun Dodson. Simon and Dave later set up Phoenix Database Technologies, and Shaun joined them in starting this venture. For me, every 6 months or so I’d take a look at Hong Kong Pacific when suddenly I found we struck gold and the stock had actually doubled from our purchase. I sold them as soon as I could and although it wasn’t Christmas I contacted Dave and sent him a cheque for some £450. Quite nice when you get something like that out of the blue, so he called me up, we got chatting, and the long and short of it was that I ended up working with him at Phoenix in Jan 1995… and we’ve been working together ever since. Simon and Dave set Phoenix up in their own style with their own characters imbued within it, which meant that we shared their successes but also went through the tough times together as well. Nothing was harder than having to go through redundancies, something that hit the company after the Y2K bubble burst. Each subsequent layoff really hit them and it was never a decision taken lightly. Dave and Simon always tried to do the right thing by their employees and it was this approach that helped to take the company from its fledgling state to one that employed over 50 people at its height. So, words to sum Dave up during the ‘Phoenix Years’? .. ‘ACHIEVEMENT, HONESTY and INTEGRITY’. It was still fun but his dedication and professionalism really shone through. And remember, this was also the period that saw Dave suffer his first seizure (in October 1998) – the start of what was to be much more personal battle for him, for Carc, and for Em and Jess. In February 2005, Phoenix was taken over by Moore Stephens and whilst Dave continued to work hard we now know that his tumour had taken hold and become a higher grade. Following what was I believe supposed to have been a routine scan it was discovered that the tumour had haemorrhaged and he underwent the first of a seemingly endless series of operations, drugs and therapies. Most of us mere mortals would have long-since given up if faced with this onslaught. Dave did return to work but it was clearly becoming increasingly hard for him to concentrate. Even when he was forced to accept that he couldn’t get into work every day he still wanted to make sure that his colleagues didn’t feel they were being let down and badgered the team into letting him undertake projects where much of the work could be done on his own. But even though Dave couldn’t work as he wanted to during these ‘Moore Stephens Years’ I believe that those of us who knew him saw him become the person who will live forever in our memories. From my own perspective, Dave grew into the character that I feel has now defined him. He was never going to give up without a fight. He was never going to let that tumour defeat him easily. But furthermore he never moaned about it to his friends and colleagues, simply seeing it as something that he had to deal with. As many people do when they find out they have cancer, Dave read up about it and yet whilst he knew that the prognosis was not good (no more than 5 years he once told me) he was a firm believer in mind over matter, positive thinking if you like. Never was this more in evidence that when Jane, my wife, was diagnosed with breast cancer in October 2011. This happened to coincide with a period of 3 months when Dave was allowed to drive again – and he drove over to see Jane in the first few weeks after her diagnosis. Lots of people offer sympathy and tell you it’s going to be alright but Dave understood precisely what was going through Jane’s mind – her worries for the future, her doubts, the potential downward spiral that such things could lead to. Many times since that visit Jane has commented on how much belief Dave had given her. No platitudes such as ‘Don’t worry, you’ll be ok’ but it was more ‘Stay positive’ and ‘Live for the day’ – something that Dave was doing himself every day. As many of you may know, Dave so inspired me with this attitude to life that I became more involved with Brain Tumour UK (Brain Tumour Charity as it is now) and set about doing something seemingly aimless such as running marathons to raise funds for brain tumour research. It’s a gruelling activity and, at the risk of sounding slightly crass, on many occasions when it got tough on those runs it only took a second for me to think of Dave and how he was going through a far tougher battle every day. He was in my thoughts on every one of those runs and I know he’ll remain so in any that I do in future. So, I feel immensely privileged to have known Dave, to be able to have called him a friend, and to have done so (thankfully) for so many years. We started off having a laugh in our youthful exuberance at the Pru, and it’s been a further privilege to see how he has developed throughout his career. But by far the greatest memories are those of the person I knew at the end. And so the words that I believe sum him up for me are ‘SELFLESS,, DETERMINED, INSPIRING and above all FRIEND’. Dave, you will be missed.