Last Wednesday, the question came up on the Community Soul group on Linked In about who was the most influential person in our lives. Well, I mentioned Jesus Christ, of course, although while being 100% Man, Christians accept him also as 100% God. So, I also added John Laing the builder. His biography is fantastic; he's a man very high on integrity and his life and how he lived it is inspiring.
Closer to home, and by no means least, the other people are my parents - high on integrity; always did what they said they would do and I realise always put the whole family i.e. me, my brother and them as a whole, above their interests. They gave us time. There may not have been a lot of money about, but they sacrificed to take an interest in us, give us time and we did things as a family when we were growing up. In that respect, we were very fortunate indeed.
Then also my grandad...he was a Royal Marine during WW2; joined up at the start in 1939 and managed to get shot up with a large calibre machine gun which also blew up a mine in front of him just 2 weeks before the war was over in 1945. As a result, he lost one and a half lungs and a leg while he spent the next 48 hours alone behind enemy lines in Holland applying his own morphine and tourniquet to stop the bleeding. Although he suffered badly from his wounds throughout the rest of his 52 years after the war, he always said that he was more fortunate than many of his mates; he just ploughed on and got on with it stubbornly refusing to let it stop him being active. Whenever I said I could not do something he always said, "No such thing as can't". That exhortation is very simple and it has always stuck with me.
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