By Jeremy Sollars
HUMANITARIAN and longtime Warwick resident Fred Hyde AM was farewelled today, Thursday 17 November, at a service at the Warwick Funerals Chapel on Willi Street, following his death last week at the age of 96.
Tributes were paid to Fred by family members and by Olav Muurlink, the chairman of Co-operation in Development (CO-ID), the charity Fred was instrumental in founding in 1991 and which has provided schools for more than 40,000 children in Bangladesh.
Members of the Warwick RSL Sub-branch were also on hand to pay a special tribute recognising Fred’s military service in World War II, both in the Middle East and in New Guinea.
Along with his retirement years spent running CO-ID, Fred has also been remembered as the owner of a successful mower and chainsaw business in Warwick for many years, as well as for his pivotal role in establishing Warwick’s Akooramak Home for the Aged.
Mr Muurlink recalled Fred’s ability to endure some of the toughest living conditions imaginable on Bangladesh’s cyclone-prone Bhola Island where CO-ID carried out its charitable work, saying Fred’s toughness came out of his experiences in the Depression and World War II.
Fred Hyde had been too unwell to travel to Bangladesh for almost the last two years, and had spent two months in the Oaks Nursing Home at Warwick Hospital before he passed away.
Today’s service was live-streamed to Bangladesh.
