John Robert Gilbertson BA
Born in Adelaide in 1946, I’m one of the first baby boomers. The first of four children born to George and Christabel, then living in Albert Park, an inner suburb. In those days it was safe to walk to school on your own or take a ride for a penny on an electric trolley bus. Life was simple.
Pollution was not a word that one would hear and public houses were often built using asbestos sheeting. Soap was soap and food was purchased from the local grocery store and families spent their time at night listening to “Smokey Dawson” on the radio or visiting close relatives sharing time with the extended family.
I graduated from Findon High School and spent my teenage years playing competitive squash with Alberton Squash Club reaching A1 grade and occasionally playing in the district team.
During my early twenties I studied Accounting at Adelaide University graduating in 1977 with a Bachelor of Arts in Accounting whilst employed with the large chemical group ICI Australia.
After 14 years with ICI I purchased a share in a packaging business, then went on to enter the funeral and cemetery industry. I started at the top as the General Manager of the Centennial Park Cemetery Trust and then spent 7 years with a large public company funeral group as the Queensland General Manager. The next role was as the Chief Executive Officer of a Melbourne based cemetery trust guiding that organisation from a turnover of $1.3M to over $5.6M in just 5 years. In all, I managed organisations that were responsible for over 100,000 funerals.
What did I learn from that experience? That if you understand emotions and how to approach emotional people, you can handle any crisis and survive. Let me explain.
This is a true experience which I was privileged with insight to be equipped to help.
It was 3:30pm on a Friday afternoon. The cemetery is usually quiet at that time. I got a call from the office staff seeking my immediate attention.
After a short walk across to the main office I was confronted by an angry women in her 50’s. As I got close I recognised her as she bellowed “You know who I am.” I asked her to spend a moment to calm herself down and then invited her to come into the office to chat about her problem.
At the height of her emotion and hurling abuse at me for what seemed an eternity, I said “You know, I don’t know what has happened to you but you most likely have every reason to be angry. I’ve got the sense that your anger is not about . . . . . . . but it’s about something else.” She stopped in her tracks. It turned out that both her and her daughter were suffering from the after affects of a sexual attack and my approach was the first time throughout their 18 year torturous experience that anyone had told her that she was entitled to be hurt.
I can’t tell you all of the story but what I can say is that I truly value being able to help this family and that it was one of many life changing experiences during my action packed lifetime.
Then there was the story of the mix up with the bodies for a burial and a cremation, with the cremation coming first and the viewing for the burial service happening some 2 hours later. But that’s another story.
What did 14 years of service in the chemical industry teach me? We are often subjected every day to some very nasty chemicals in the products we use. And in the funeral industry I often wondered why every third person suffers from cancer and why people were dying well before their 3 score and ten years.
What affect did over 20 years of service in the funeral industry have on me? Well, when it all boils down, we come into the world with nothing, and we go out with nothing. We all need to value the relationships we have and our record in life speaks for itself. My motto is summed up by a passage of scripture.
King Solomon wrote in the Bible book of Ecclesiastes in Jerusalem around 1,000 years before Christ in Chapter 9 verse 5 …
“For the living are conscious that they will die; but as for the dead, they are conscious of nothing at all, neither do they anymore have wages, because the remembrance of them has been forgotten.”
And then it says in verse 10 …
“All that your hand finds to do, do with your very power, for there is no work nor devising nor knowledge nor wisdom in She´ol (the grave), the place to which you are going.”
Yes, “work what is good towards all” is a valuable rule to live by. Particularly whan I can share that phylosophy with my beautiful wife and best friend Dianne, my children, Mathew, Brett, Tracey and Felicity, daughters in law, Andrea and Donna, and grandchildren, Tate, Imogen, Mercedes, Lane, Holley and our new grandchild yet to arrive.
PRIVACY
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| Name: | John Gilbertson |
| Address: | 29 Rich Street, Noble Park, VIC 3149 Australia |
| Phone Number: | +61 3 9886 5245 |
| Fax Number: | +61 3 9886 5370 |
| Email address: | johng@bitemark.com.au |
| URL: | http://johngilbertson@wordpress.com |
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Data is collected the following ways from this website:
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Data is collected for the following uses:
| Primary data | Technical Administration of the Website |
Customer Administration | Marketing |
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Green Mattresses
22/11/2007
