Diana Graves was laid to rest beside her husband, David, at Hanwell cemetery, west London on March 1 after a sad but uplifting funeral at the beautiful St Barnabas church in Ealing. Deeply moving tributes were paid by both sons and Heather Mills, a former colleague of David's (and mine) and close friend of Diana's.
Diana Graves was perhaps known to only a few Salut! readers, generally those who knew her late husband, David, a great colleague and friend.Diana died on Sunday (Jan 31), far too early, after battling pancreatic cancer for several months. She had contracted Covid while in hospital for the tests that unexpectedly revealed her much more serious problem but I am not aware that the virus played any part in her death.
Diana remained philosophical, brave and even optimistic despite knowing the gravity of her condition. She broke the news to me in a hands-free call I took as I drove through glorious vineyards in the south of France. She was eager to talk and full of hope, speaking with great determination about reviving her idea of an evening out we'd planned - Diana, my wife Joelle and our friends Stuart and Jenny Higgins - until different travel arrangements and then lockdowns intervened. She was adamant it would one day go ahead.
When we spoke again, after my return to the UK, Diana was still a bundle of confidence and joy, excited about work to update the family home in Ealing, only a coupe of miles from ours, while she stayed with a sister in Shropshire. To my immense regret, we did not speak again.Joelle and I are devastated by the news and our daughters, Christelle and Nathalie, share the pain now felt by Diana and David's boys Oliver and Nathan.
This is how, in 2007, I remembered David's tragic death on the fifth anniversary of it happening, and how I had witnessed Diana's magnificently dignified handling of the wretched task of telling the boys.By all means check the link and see the kind words left by readers at that time about David. I will not transfer the comments here as this, essentially, is about Diana. RIP two great friends
Diana, left, with her sister, Sarah
Photo of David courtesy of the Telegraph
Every so often, you still hear that extravagant, rising laugh of his.
You imagine him back in the old Telegraph newsroom. There, he'd be approaching each task with customary professionalism. If things were quiet, he'd be wandering from desk to desk showing quizzical interest in what others were up to.
For certain, he'd still be irritating the newsdesk on a regular basis with whinges about the paper's inexplicable failure to send a reporter (by implication him) on this or that (preferably foreign) story. And he'd still be boring everyone to bits about Wolverhampton Wanderers and U2.
But David is not there. Five years ago today (in July 2002), just a few weeks after his 50th birthday, he died in an accident that should not have happened while on a press diving trip to the Bahamas.
At the moment news came through next morning, I was sitting on the newsdesk fielding a call from an irate reader about some reference in a court report to which she had taken offence. "Get them off the line," someone called out. "David Graves is dead."
There was an immediate need for someone to go to David's home and be with his wife, Diana, and their two sons, Oliver, then eight, and six-year-old Nathan. I was the logical choice. David and I had known each other for a quarter of a century since we were at the Press Association together; he and Diana were good friends and our homes were no more than a couple of miles apart.
Vivid memories of the rest of that day will remain with me for ever. I would not even want to forget the serenity and skill that Diana somehow mustered to tell the boys their father was not coming home.
She had been awoken long before dawn by a knock on the door. It had fallen to some poor policeman on night shift to call round and break the news.
Wisely enough, she packed the boys off to school first thing as normal. But on my advice, she went back to collect them before the midday break. With the speed of communications, I was concerned about the risk, however slight, of them hearing about it in the playground.
Back at home, Diana fussed around the boys, plying them with drinks and biscuits while she summoned the courage for the worst duty she had ever faced as a mother. Then she sat them down at the dining room table. She made me stay in the room before she could bring herself to break the news.
Calmly, almost as if telling a bedtime story, she explained how daddy had died.
She recalled the times before bed when she had put a globe in front of them and got them to point to where he happened to be, and then to say goodnight. She reminded them of how excited daddy had been about his trip, and how happy he had sounded when calling home, just the day before. Slowly, she arrived at the point where the word "accident" had to be mentioned.
One of the boys - I think it was Oliver - briefly became angry, having guessed that something awful must have happened; mums don't take you out of school for nothing.
There was no easy way for Diana that morning, but she had risen above her own unspeakable anguish to lessen her sons' pain. Much of the rest of the day was devoted to keeping them preoccupied and, after the inevitable tears, they behaved admirably.
I will be thinking a lot about all of them on today's anniversary of the tragedy.
David, the husband and father they lost, was an exceptional character. Tall and confident, he brought reassurance to any gathering. I seem to recall that he persuaded a BA pilot to upgrade a group of servicemen returning to the UK on a scheduled flight from some desert war training exercise.
In common with many people who worked for the Telegraph, David was not a Tory. The politics could safely be left to others; he was content to do his bit to make the news pages the best in daily journalism.
And David did do his bit. He was a great reporter in the old-fashioned sense of wanting to obtain and share the most accurate details of any story he was covering. He knew how to convey those facts with clarity and conviction, and he had no interest in invention or exaggeration.
He would have found plenty to moan about these days.
He had no aversion to hard work and was no Lunchtime O'Booze. But unless there was a good reason to remain at his desk, he believed in the lunch break and would have laughed at anyone - they're all over the place now - who thought it unprofessional to take one. He would have grumbled loudly about the practice of filling pages with anonymous news agency reports.
Yet in other respects, David would have found himself suited to modern ways (you may be thinking "it's only five years", but consider how things have changed in even that short period).
He was good with gadgets, quick to adapt to new technology. He was made for today's diversified approach, in which the Telegraph is among the field leaders, to delivering newspaper content to readers.
This posting has very little to do with France. Hence its headline. But David's last assignment involved a cross-Channel visit a few days before his death thousands of miles away in the other direction.
Much of his career was spent covering wars, bombings, disaster. That last trip, before he went to the Bahamas, was also war-related, but in a gentler sense.
On July 2 2002, the paper carried his report from the Somme about the progress of work on the Thiepval visitor centre that has opened since his death. And on his return to London, David wrote about an appeal for funds by the Friends of War Memorials, now called War Memorials Trust, which works to preserve 60,000 war memorials in Britain and overseas.
These were hardly the biggest stories David had been asked to handle. But given that ours is a predominantly thankless trade, it is heartening to note that the Friends marked his death by establishing the David Graves Memorial Fund which chose appropriate projects to be financed by funds donated as a result, directly or indirectly, of his reporting.
* Not quite 19 years after the awful, unnecessary death of David, I mourn the passing of Diana as I did that of David and my thoughts, and those of my family, are with Oliver and Nathan.
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