IT WAS about the life that he lived, and the impact he had on others that made Glen Turner stand out.
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A packed hall at a memorial service on Saturday heard the loving partner and father-of-two had his dream family home in Dungowan and was completely devoted to his family.
Life partner Alison McKenzie joked she was a brewing widow when Glen turned his focus to his craft, and admitted she cringed when he bought a pair of rainbow-colour shoes overseas.
“The shoes, Glen called those his happy shoes and he had those specially made in Vietnam, and particularly asked if they could put the L (for left) and the R (for right) on the back,” she recalled on Saturday afternoon.
The story of how they first met stems back to 2000 when they both attended a dinner for singles over 30, when Glen made a beeline for her, ignoring the rules to move round the table and talk to everyone there.
“He was the most outgoing of the blokes there,” she fondly remembered. “Glen wouldn’t move away from me, so I realised very early on Glen wasn’t one to follow the rules.”
She recounted his generosity to feed a homeless man in Tamworth just recently and that he was on a first-name basis with the shoe shiner in the middle of Sydney, after a visit second time round.
“He rang me and said ‘you know the shoe-shine man in Pitt St mall, he remembered me’,” Alison joked. “Of course he remembered you, Glen, because you are unforgettable.”
The afternoon was a chance for everyone to celebrate the life that was tragically cut short almost two weeks ago.
“I just cannot take it how much has been done for us and everyone with their beautiful words,” Glen’s mother, Coral Turner, told the hall. “Nobody could have had a better son. The silly little things he used to do and say, I know he had his funny ways.”
Glen Turner was 51.
