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A Tribute to my brother, Trevor Heath
Trevor Heath's sister, Elaine, remembers her brother in her own words.
This is about my younger brother, Trev, who was murdered in the Tararua Ranges in April this year.
There are a couple of reasons I'm writing this. Firstly, it was really hurtful to read and see in the media comments from so-called 'friends' of Trev's, about his possible involvement in importing or selling drugs. Quite frankly, if people have information such as this, they should tell it to the Police, who will deal with it appropriately - rather than getting their little bit of glory from Trev's death by speaking to the media. The media are the only ones who benefit from this. It does his family no good and might even make it more difficult for the Police to solve his murder.
The second reason for writing this is so that people might get to see the side of Trev that I know - that of a younger brother and friend, and part of a family, rather than that portrayed recently in the media.
One of my first memories of Trev was when he first started to walk. He was late to start to walk and talk, but I remember him climbing up onto the side of our old round vacuum cleaner and pushing it around the living room - he looked really cute, and I remember my Mum and I laughing at him.
Once he did learn to walk, Trev was always running away. When he was very young he ran away from our house in Lower Hutt all the way to Seaview, and was brought back in a police car, much to his delight. He ran away from kindy and came to look for me at primary school once. He had to sit with me for the afternoon in my class, I can remember him looking up at me at my desk, being really happy to be in with the 'big kids'.
I remember sticking up for Trev on any number of occasions. He was teased and hassled a lot by other kids because he couldn't read or write properly and his speech wasn't quite right. I also remember being really angry with him because he wanted to hang around with me and my friends when they came over to our house after school, because he didn't have any of his own.
Although we didn't know it at the time, Trev had what is now known as ADD - Attention Deficit Disorder. If my parents and the doctors had known this, Trev's life would probably have been significantly different. He may have coped better with school, not got into so many fights, and avoided trouble a bit better.
When he was a kid he always had to take things to pieces to see how they worked, which used to frustrate my parents no end. He didn't have the patience to put them back together, so more often than not his toys remained in bits.
Trev had a good sense of humour - pretty uncomplicated really. He came and stayed with me in Auckland when he was 16, and was absolutely rapt to find that Ian Drury and the Blockheads had written a song about him - 'Clever Trevor'!
I remember how proud he was when he read his first book. It was by Wilbur Smith, and it felt like a real achievement for him. Being the only non-reader i
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| Trev was a generous guy. He thought nothing of packing all my stuff into the van and trailer and bringing it and me from Lower Hutt to Palmerston North to help me shift into a new flat. |
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n a family of bookworms must have felt pretty isolating.
Trev was a generous guy. He thought nothing of packing all my stuff into the van and trailer and bringing it and me from Lower Hutt to Palmerston North to help me shift into a new flat. And he drove up to Palmerston after working a full day just to come to my housewarming party.
Trev had a bit of a tough image - he liked or needed to be seen as being a pretty hard guy. But underneath that he was very sensitive - a big softy. He was told from an early age that he was adopted and it certainly meant a lot to him to find and get together with his birth mother. He struggled for a long time with who he was, where he'd come from and whether he was ok. I'd like to think that in the last few years he'd found some peace with that.
He would come across as being very confident. When he started his business we all had big hopes that he was going to settle down. In fact he stuck with the business for longer than many things and put such a lot of effort into it.
He was quite protective of anyone he loved. I believe that there were a number of things that Trev didn't tell us because he felt it was either better that we didn't know or because we might not agree with or understand what he was doing. He always wanted to check out my boyfriends - "you make sure he treats you right Sis".
Trev liked everything to be fast. Life and most things in it moved too slowly for him. It probably stemmed from his ADD, at least in part. So he liked fast cars, driving too fast, fast boats, and a fast life. He was always looking for a shortcut, the quickest way, and he had so much energy. Although having said that, he also had endless patience when it came to kids, and children loved him - he was in many ways much of a child himself.
It was quite normal for Trev and I not to see each other for months on end - we lived very separate lives. But whenever we either got together or spoke on the phone we'd do so for ages and just slot back into the way we'd always been. Basically he was just an ordinary guy, who had some quite major difficulties at a time when appropriate help wasn't available.
As I said at his funeral, there is a lot I don't understand about Trev, and a lot I don't know about him, and probably never will. But the bottom line of it all is that he's my wee bro, and I miss him very much.
©1999 New Zealand City Limited.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any other form. All photographs are the personal property of the Heath family and may not be reproduced without express permission from the family through New Zealand City Limited.
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Trevor Heath's sister, Elaine, remembers her brother in her own words. |
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