Two very sad losses

Last Friday was a sad day, I'm afraid. When I returned from to the stable around midday from Johnny Cronin's funeral in the Catholic Church at the end of the road, I was greeted with the news that Louise, who worked in this stable for Dave Morris until a few months ago, had been found dead at home that morning, having apparently died in the night from causes as yet unknown. This was just such a sad and shocking event. While I can't claim to have known Louise well - witness the fact that I don't know her surname, and I don't know her age, although I'd put her in the first half of her 30s - I knew her well enough to have found her a thoroughly pleasant person. When she worked for Dave, she was thoroughly dependable, decent, helpful and friendly, and when we've bumped into her since her departure she's been exactly the same. I know that in life we've learned to expect the unexpected, but this news was so unexpected and so tragic as to be really, really shocking. To her family I can only offer my deepest sympathy.

Johnny Cronin's death was far less of a shock, but no less of a loss to the world. In fact, I'd say that Newmarket really did lose one of its best men when Johnny died, a fact which was amply demonstrated at his funeral. I have rarely seen a church fuller, and the words spoken by both the priest and by members of Johnny's family made it plain that he had been a man of a standard of decency and devotion which is very rare in the modern world. The priest articulated the views of most of us in saying that there are times when life is so good and straightforward that it is very easy to believe that the world is under divine control, but other times when things of such seeming injustice and wrongness occur that one's faith is tested as one tries to understand how this can be allowed to happen - and then he said that Johnny was one of the very few people whose faith was invariably so strong that his believe in the all-pervading love of God remained unshaken however hard life became. And when Johnny's grandson told us that, in the 20 years he knew his grandfather, he never heard him raise his voice once, that was very easy to believe.

Mick Wallace, former landlord of the Wellington pub and a contemporary of Johnny's (they started out together as apprentices with Geoffrey Brooke in the mid-50s, Johnny having come to town from Kilmallock, Co. Limerick, at the age of 13), told me at the Tattersalls February Sale that Johnny had been diagnosed with cancer and had been told that he had three months to live. As it happened, and probably as a consequence of Johnny's physical and mental strength, he lived for another eight months before dying ten days ago. I saw him several times through the year, most often as he walked down Exeter Road on a Sunday morning with his wife on their way to church, the last time being maybe three weeks ago when they were accompanied by his brother Pat, Lord Derby's stud groom. Johnny's face will be familiar to anyone who has frequented Tattersalls Sales in recent decades, because he was a groundsman there for the final part of his working life, from 1980 to 2006. He was usually to be found close to the entrance on sale days, always immaculately turned out, quietly spoken and courteous to everyone he passed. There was a sale in Tattersalls as his funeral took place, but it must have taken place with a skeleton staff, because it seemed as if all Tattersalls' employees and directors, past and present, were there in the church to pay their respects to their former colleague. We were indeed bidding farewell to a very fine man - but as his daughter reminded us from the front of the church, we had two options: either to cry, or to do what Johnny would have wanted, which was to smile at our good fortune of being able to enjoy this beautiful world which God has bequeathed to us, His children.