Friends and family of a north-east RAF veteran are remembering him with a poignant video reminding people to “always look on the bright side of life”.
Squadron leader Stuart Wright recently lost an 18-month battle with throat cancer aged 69.
The veteran and businessman, who lived in Moray, will be buried on Wednesday at a funeral with restricted numbers and led, at his request, by his wife of almost 25 years Ruth.
“It would have been a very big funeral in normal times as he was so well known,” she said.
“He touched so many lives along the way and he didn’t even realise. The tributes I’ve received since he died have been, and continue to be, such a comfort to me.”
Mr Wright’s funeral will be live-streamed and will feature a photo montage summing up his life – to the soundtrack of Monty Python’s Always Look on the Bright Side of Life.
“That was Stuart’s song and when people hear it on the video they’ll just know it was Stuart all over,” Mrs Wright added.
“He and a friend took to the stage in Shetland dressed in bandages to perform to that for a variety show. He always had a twisted sense of humour. His smile was always there, he had a cheeky smile and a dry wit.”
A life in service was perhaps always on the cards for Mr Wright, who was born in June 1951 in Coventry.
His sense of adventure was identified early on when he was caught escaping out of the garden gate by standing on the back of their golden labrador as a toddler.
He excelled at various sports at Ravensdale School and Caludon Castle, before joining the RAF as a secretarial clerk, after his attempts to follow in his father’s footsteps and join the Grandier Guards faltered due to sight problems.
Between 1967 and 1979, he served in Basingstoke, the Maldives, Bicester, Hong Kong, High Wycombe and Henlow.
He then gained a business studies qualification and a commission as a corporal to Cranwell, and posted to Aberporth, Brawdy, Laarbruch in Germany, Saxa Word in Shetland, Lossiemouth, Glasgow and RAF Boddam during the next 20 years.
It was in Germany that he met Ruth, who was teaching in a school there, and the couple later married at St Margaret’s Chapel in Edinburgh in 1996.
“His brain never stopped,” Mrs Wright added.
“He was always thinking of what to do next and was ahead of his time in many ways. Before he took ill he said he got really angry at the thought of dying, as he had so much still to do.
“He achieved so much, starting as a boy, getting a commission, getting his squadron leader title and setting up his business. I am really going to miss him.”
It was in Shetland he found a love of fishing – which was to shape his retirement when he walked out of RAF Boddam for the last time in 1999.
The couple lived in Alves, Moray, and Mr Wright worked as a classroom assistant at Rothes Primary, before taking an administration job with Capability Scotland in Elgin then a job at Turriff Contractors.
All the while, the pair were preparing to open and live at their recently-purchased fishery at Artloch, near Huntly, in yet another ambitious change of direction.
They moved in 2000 and three years later Mr Wright’s vision was realised when the fishery opened to the public.
He never forgot his forces roots, though, and helped found the ex-servicemen’s RAF club in Inverurie, which he chaired for many years.
He was also a dedicated Rotarian, and served as president and secretary of the Huntly branch.
He died on Sunday, November 22, in the care of staff at the Rothieden ward of Huntly’s Jubilee Hospital.
