I think most people here will know me, but just in case you don't, my name is Will Smith. I'm the youngest son of Tony and I thank you all for coming today so that we can all remember and celebrate the time that we shared with him. I'm speaking today on behalf of Mum, my brother Mike and Peter and my sister Joanne.

Dad lived his life in the country and farming was his life. And it's the way of the country that seeds are sown, they grow, give up their harvest and are cut down. I would like to spend a few moments with everyone here today reflecting on Dad's life and its harvest.

The seed was sown in 1933 and Dad was born in a small village called Stoke Hammond, Buckinghamshire (very near the scene of the Great Train Robbery. As far as we know, there is no evidence that Dad was involved in this in any way!). His father, George was a farmer before him and his mother Nellie, helped, as so many farmers' wives did, and still do today.

Although Dad put on a brave face in public, his life was punctuated with periods of physical pain and suffering. This began at an early age and as a young boy he wore leg braces for some time.

When he was eight years old, his father George secured a job managing a mixed farm in South Northants and his family moved to Falcutt Hall. This was to become Dad's home for the next 41 years.

His early years passed and he went to Magdalen College School in Brackley. Following a small but bloody incident involving another boy and the school pond, Dad found himself boarding at a new school in Bloxham. More opportunities to try out the sick bay were never far away and while at Bloxham, both of his cartilages were removed. In fact the common threads for Dad were country life, illness and cricket and it was during his time at Bloxham that he concentrated on the third.

As children, tales of life at boarding school were commonplace and stories of frosty, snowy mornings with the dormitory windows wide open were often heard. Financial independence was not something he had learned at that young and tender age. For years we believed his story of writing home to his Mum and Dad with the heart rending plea:

No mun, no fun, your son.
To which (so he would have us believe) his father replied:
Too bad, so sad, your Dad

From this tale our expectations were set!

In his late teens, complete with glowing school reports, he returned to Falcutt Hall and it was from here that he joined the army. His mother was distraught, but he went to Egypt for two years anyway.

5th Royal Iniskillen Dragoon Guards - Medical Corps
Smith, Anthony
Rank - Corporal
22750259, Sir

He loved the meticulous way of army life and continued his association with illness and hospital life when he spent six weeks in bed with dysentery and jaundice. Many years of potting rabbits, pigeons and pheasants on the farm had equipped our Dad with certain skills that were useful. He was courted by The Snipers but couldn't be poached into their ranks. Dad was offered a commission but refused and he returned home to study agriculture at Moulton College.

After his college days, Dad joined his father at Falcutt Hall to work on the farm. It was at this stage that Dad learned what it meant to take on new responsibility in times of crisis. After a sudden illness, George, his father was no longer able to manage the business. Dad met with the owner of the farm, Captain Lindsey, and proposed that from that day responsibility should pass to himself. A twelve month trial was agreed and Dad met the ten men the next morning to give them the news. It was at this early stage when he developed a simple management philosophy. Don't ask anyone to do a job that you wouldn't be prepared to do yourself. He continued his management for the Lindsey family for the next 35 years until the farm was sold.

On New Year's Eve 1956 he met his dream girl and that night vowed to his mother that he would marry her within the year. Ann Hawtin, a young and impressionable farmer's daughter from Caldecote had no idea how that New Year's Eve Party was to change her life. On December 30th 1957 Ann and Tony were joined at the altar of Towcester Parish Church.

This new chapter of Dad's life did not begin without incident. Like a proud cockerel, he strutted around the bedroom, wooing his blushing bride. However, instead of sweet nothings, the air was soon filled with cursing and swearing the like of which that honeymoon suite had not heard before, as Dad landed a mighty kick on the leg of the bed, breaking his big toe in two places. Dad's curses were immediately joined by Mum's uncontrollable laughter. I dread to think what passers by in the corridor must have thought. Eventually their marriage was successfully consummated and both being descended from farming lines, they knew their duty and quickly set about increasing their stock. Within a few years they were blessed with four children.

Over the following years, we all came to know and love our old Dad and our relationship with him changed as the years passed. What was he like?

He worked us hard on the farm.
He debated robustly (that is he knew how to shout!)
He was always right (even when he was wrong!)
He could swear like a trooper.
He worked ridiculously hard and gave us everything that we could have needed.
Most of all, he gave us room to be ourselves.

He was a good Dad. There are lots of stories I could tell you, such as when the bull charged him, broke his leg, broke his ribs and he had to run 50 yards and jump over a stream to escape, while Pete Tallet distracted the bull (with a pitch fork!). Dad was not amused! Or the time that he dispatched Joanne to an auction to buy an electric sheep shearer. Bids went beyond her limit of £250 and she didn't get it. In the same sale, there was an antique hand wound shearing machine and Joanne concocted a wizard wheeze. She bought the antique for 50 pence and brought it proudly home. She told Dad that she had opened the bidding at her limit of £250 (to psyche out the opposition!) and she had successfully competed her mission. The result was a high octane explosion, hats were thrown on the floor, hats were jumped on. There were stormings off and Joanne was made to see clearly that Dad was not happy. About two hours later Joanne confessed that it had all been a practical joke and Dad immediately saw the funny side (well it was probably about six months later actually!)

One by one we grew up and left home. I was the last and like the mad fool that I was, I decided that farming was for me. With hindsight, we can see that this was not the best time for Dad to give up smoking and this compounded the pressure that he was under. I worked on the farm for Dad and I have to say that his management style would not have appeared in a case study by the Harvard Business School. There were stand-up rows, rattles were thrown from prams (on both sides!) and eventually, I left. As I look back now, particularly as I ran my farm over the last three years, I have smiled. We were too close, too much alike, we were both impossible and fireworks were inevitable! But actually I can see now he was nearly always right and he has since offered me invaluable support and friendship. His knowledge of stock and grassland management was second to none. His commitment to his livestock was unequalled. I shall miss him.

In 1985 more bad news came when Dad was diagnosed with cancer of the colon. He put on a brave face and made light of it, but we knew he was worried. After a massive operation, he was re-plumbed, but left in a huge amount of pain. This remained with him until the end and defied all the treatments that were offered. Within six months of his operation, he was pulling his weight in the lambing yard, helping with the lambing of 700 ewes. In 1989, Mum had a heart attack, and in light of Dad's continuing poor health, they scaled down their farming enterprise, gave up Warren Farm, and concentrated on their 30 acres up Sulgrave Road.

In 1990 Mum and Dad moved to Helmdon. Here they immersed themselves even more fully into the rich tapestry of village life. Dad could nearly always be seen at any village event.

From the cheese and wine evenings to the WEA
From carnivals, to the Christmas pantomime
From Lyndsey's luncheon club to local attractions

Dad loved to be at the heart of the action. In fact, it was after he had been to the Christmas pantomime in 1994, that Dad suffered his first major heart attack. Mum and all of the children remember being called to the hospital on that December night in order for us to say our goodbyes. We walked into the intensive care room one by one and were met with: 'Don't you kick that bleep bleep monitor'. Even so close to death, his unique personality shone through. Dad defied the odds and pulled back to reasonable health.

Mum and Dad both took stock and decided that they should treat every day as a gift and that they should concentrate on enjoying themselves. They took three cruises, it would have been four, but disaster intervened when five days before setting out for the Baltic, Dad tripped, fell and broke his hip. Another spell in hospital and Dad made steady progress. His hip continued to cause him pain and he restricted his activities to the more genteel end of the spectrum.

The last event he attended was a WEA tour of five churches which started in Helmdon on Wednesday last week. The rest as they say, is now history. He died here in this church doing one of the things that he loved. He'd shared a joke with Ian Drew who was mowing the graveyard, offered advice to the group on the directions to Easton Neston Church, stood up on a pew to take a picture, walked to the altar, just back there, dropped to the floor and, with our Mum by his side, quietly made his exit. Ironic really, joined at the altar with their vows, parted at the altar by death.

As I said at the beginning, the story of his life is the way of things in the country; seeds are sown, they grow, they give up their harvest and they are cut down. The seeds that Dad left behind are many and varied. Perhaps the most obvious are his children and we in turn bore his grandchildren. But I know there are many more seeds that each and every one of us here will recognise as being unique to us.

Seeds of laughter
Friendship
Strength in adversity
Good stories
Advice and help on all manner of subjects

But to me the most important of all is the memories I have of him as my Dad and a very good friend.

As you walk away from here today think of Tony and take the opportunity to reflect yourselves on the memories you have, what he meant to you and the seeds that he left in your lives.

Will Smith