I am immensely grateful to have had the opportunity to have worked closely with Stef over the past 13 years. He was both a tenacious leader, manager, and an all-round great human. I am deeply saddened that he has been taken from us all before his time. I very much owe my current career to his vision to create our department from next to nothing, recruit a merry band of waifs and strays into it and to grow it into something bigger and better than its component parts. In doing so he has given me professional satisfaction, great colleagues, and lifelong friends. Professionally he was a great man-manager - he could persuade you to make a 180° turn in your position and let you believe it was your idea! He soaked up many lines of my email rants about the latest frustration and would talk straightforwardly and fairly, giving credit where it was due and challenging where your case was weak. He would go into battle for his team, employing heavyweight political skill, and we in return would do whatever he requested. You never felt more powerful and self-assured than when going into a difficult meeting with Stef at your side. He was knowledgeable too, encyclopaedic even! A master of both the dark-arts of corporate politics and his subject-matter. He could recall a telephone book's worth of names from the top of his head, with detailed histories that always gave me the impression he'd clearly touched a lot of people’s lives and knew all the key players. When the work was done and we could relax together, it was always easy-going having a beer or two with Stef: never stuffy or forced like it can be with 'bosses'. I’m grateful now we managed a 2021 Christmas work-do, an all too brief romp through Winchester, after the enforced separation of the prior two years. There he talked freely about his pride in his family, modest hopes for the future and retirement, and we pondered a world without him in our professional lives. I'll miss the relaxed chats, beer in hand, while he walked us through some old war-story, and we all put the (often aviation) world to rights. In my memory his war-stories never put himself as the hero in the piece, so I'll have to ask his forgiveness (rather than his permission - as he would surely advise) if I can try make him the hero of this one? Rest easy Stef, you'll be missed. My deepest condolences to Frances, Jaco and Charl. Chris OB