By Jeremy Sollars
TRIBUTES are flowing in for Warwick’s Fred Hyde AM – the driving force behind a charity which has helped educate more than 40,000 children in Bangladesh – who has died, aged 96.
Fred passed away peacefully on Tuesday morning at The Oaks Nursing home in Warwick, after a battle with cancer.
The organisation which he founded in 1991, Co-operation in Development or CO-ID, became the focus of the last 25 years of Fred’s life, and saw him divide his time between Warwick and Bangladesh.
He was a private, humble man who charity colleagues, friends and family have described as “a remarkable Australian”.
CO-ID has so far built more than 40 schools on Bhola Island in Bangladesh, one of the world’s poorest Third World countries.
The charity’s primary focus is to bring basic education – reading, writing and maths – to the children of Bhola Island, and it can build a basic school for 300 children for just AUS$8000.
Speaking to the Free Times from her home in Beenleigh this week Fred’s niece, Joclyn Watt, said “his heart was in Bangladesh”.
“Fred had said to me he had wanted to pass while in Bangladesh – it actually broke his heart that he hadn’t been able to get back there for nearly the last two years,” she said.
“He had been living at home since his last trip and he had been very unwell and hadn’t expected to make it back to Warwick.
“I was visiting him one day just a few months ago, and he became very ill while I was there, I had to call the ambulance.
“He spent three weeks in hospital and then he was moved into The Oaks – he was there for just eight and a half weeks.”
Joclyn fondly described her uncle as “a real character”.
“He always had a story and he loved to give advice,” she said.
“He was very generous to his family and we were all just happy for him to be doing his work in Bangladesh, to let him do his thing.”
She said Fred never married, principally due to a heart condition he was diagnosed with when signing up for the army during the Second World War, which in the end didn’t stop him from reaching the grand age of 96.
“He never expected to live long, and he never married because he was worried he would ‘conk out’ at any given time,” she said.
Fred Hyde was born in Pittsworth and saw action during World War II as an infantry signaller in the Middle East, New Guinea and Borneo.
After the war, Mr Hyde lived in Loganholme with his sister and brother-in-law for several years and had a short stint in business in Mt Isa before moving to Warwick. He ran a successful chainsaw and mechanic shop in West Warwick until his retirement.
Fred was also involved in the original committee which founded Akooramak Home for the Aged in Warwick.
CO-ID chairman Olav Muurlink said Fred “took the same attitude he took to war on the Kokoda Trail to war on poverty in Bangladesh”.
“He would eat the same dreadful dirty rice and meagre vegetables the locals have, sleep out in the open regardless of the weather on building sites, and drink the same arsenic-tainted water as the locals,” he told the Free Times.
“He built a school program that makes the organisation he founded, Co-operation in Development, one of the largest foreign education projects in Bangladesh, even though it operates on one of the smallest budgets of any NGO operating there.
“He used to count every cent, watch every cent, and once I even saw him take a piece of mangy string and put it aside and say ‘I think I might be able to use that later’.
Mr Muurlink said Bhola Island was a place that even Bangladeshis think of as being rough.
“It’s to Bangladesh what Siberia is to Russia, a really tough place,” he said.
“Fred was very affected by the Great Depression; he once told me that he thought it would never end, and for him in a sense, it never did, he took that same sense of having to fight out every day of life with him to Bangladesh. “When I was travelling around the schools earlier this year people would say ‘Hyde has come’, not because they thought I was him, but because they called all white people ‘Hydes’.
“Fred’s organisation has been built in his image – tough, lean, and caring.
“The committee, which is spread across the east coast of Australia now, is absolutely determined to keep his legacy going, and we are in fact building more kindergartens this coming dry season.”
While Fred was uncomfortable with accolades, he was awarded an AM for his services to charity and is a past Senior Queenslander of the Year.
Fred Hyde’s funeral will be held at 1pm next Thursday at the Warwick Funerals Chapel at 48 Willi Street in Warwick, and all are welcome.
To find out more about CO-ID and to donate, visit www.fredhyde.org
