From Peter Burgess:
Peter,
It is with great sadness that I have to let you know that Brian Calder passed away early this morning in a Sydney hospital after a relatively short battle with cancer.
No further details at this stage. Appreciate if you could send this to the OTVA team.
—
Regards
Peter W Burgess
7 Comments
From Paul McCann:
Peter – bad news I am afraid. I got a call this morning from Brian brother – Brian passed away this morning at his daughters house. I will email more later today but I visited him last weekend and we had a great discussion. He was a top guy – and we will miss him a lot.
Best Regards
Paul
Grom Ron Beckett:
Oh bugger.
I saw Brian about a month ago when he moved down here after being diagnosed. He was living at his daughter’s about 3 km from here. He needed help with his Land Rover (we were both on the Aust Land Rover forum). We usually caught up whenever he was down from Qld.
Ron
From Bob Emanuel:
Brian Calder – I knew him well, ISTC at Paddington and later HO.
Lovely guy.
Bob
From Garry Hausfeld:
Brian Calder is included in a photo taken at an OTVA function at Christmas 2007, see OTVA NEWSLETTER – February 2008 – Volume 10 – Page 2.
I had many contacts with Brian, mostly in the late 90’s when he was responsible for dealing with customers requiring Intelsat access.
The group he was in at that time was variously called Telstra Business & Government, or Business & International group.
That was in the time before Intelsat privatised, and Telstra/OTC as the Australian signatory, handled the interface between customers and Intelsat access.
It was an interesting time trying to meet the needs of commercial customers, while negotiating the labyrinth of Intelsat standards, and obtaining approvals of the various Intelsat Signatories in other countries, who all wanted a cut of the customer pie.
I was glad I was only involved in the purely technical issues.
But Brian always seemed to manage to do the job well.
regards,
Garry.
Fron Natalie O’Neill (Brian’s daughter):
The funeral service will be this Friday (26 July 2013) at 1pm at Pinegrove Memorial Park on the Great Western Hwy.
From Allan Hennessy:
I attach the form completed by Brian when he joined the OTVA in which he summarises his employment history with OTC.
https://www.otva.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/Brian-Calder.pdf
Interesting reading
From John Eades:
Natalie I worked with you Dad in Moree, I am very sorry to hear of his passing. I was away and only returned home late Sunday even otherwise I would have attended his funeral and paid my respects.
One incident that stands out in my mind was your Dad bought a Holden Torana XU1 and took me for a short ride down the Newell highway. There is an expression I can’t repeat (it is a resultant of FEAR) but I was hanging onto my seat for grim death at the speed we were going. Never forgotten that ride and yes I did say to him at the time his car was just a little faster (A lot B..dy faster) than my V8 ford falcon.
Regards
John Eades