About 2500 friends and family paid their last respects to Victor Moar during his two-hour funeral service in the Armidale Exhibition Centre to on Friday at 2pm.
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The 53-year-old greatly loved father and grandfather and well-known, nationally recognised auctioneer died after he was struck by lightning while running for shelter from a storm at the Golden Collar Cattle Dog Trial at Geurie, near Dubbo, on Saturday October 20.
People streamed into the venue from about 1pm, all no doubt had their own story to tell about this remarkable man who quite obviously touched so many people’s lives in one way or another, and the stories were going around well before the service began.
“When you had a conversation with him your day just got better,” one person remembered.
“He had this unbelievable capacity to make you feel there was no-one he was going to talk to today that was more important than you,” said someone else.
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“I first met him in the centre, he was selling poultry at the time. That’s where I first got the idea that everyone was important.”
The service started with the song “Have A Little Faith In Me” and Clancy Moar, as the Master of ceremonies, told everyone it was not to be a day of sadness. He delivered a touching eulogy for his father.
“Thank you everyone who is present here, each and every one of you has contributed to the man who was Victor Moar,” he said.
Victor was described as always smiling, always laughing and just comfortable with himself.
It was revealed during the course of the service that Victor was born during a severe thunderstorm. The family’s observation that Victor came in with a bang and went out with a bang is testament to its resilience during such a difficult and trying time. It was just another thing Victor loved about the family he was so very proud of.
The man who was by his side on the day he died told those gathered how it happened, what had happened and assured all gathered that Victor’s death was instantaneous.
“If you thought Victor was one in a million, then now it is a statistical fact … he went in a way that proves that … hit by a rogue lightning bolt,” another speaker told those gathered.
This was a funeral attended by people who laughed and cried, sometimes right after each other, and as Clancy said at the beginning of the service, that’s what Victor would have wanted and so too his family.
It was a long service, but one that very few left before it was over, such was the popularity, regard and esteem of New England’s most loved auctioneer.
