Sitting quietly yesterday in the lovely horsehoe-shaped nave of Lorne and Lowland Church in Campbeltown, shortly to fill with people and listening to the power and the gentleness of Elgar’s Enigma Variations, these characteristics seemed to sum up William G Craig, whose funeral was about to be held there.
The second generation of a transport business built by a family with a pioneering gene, with two brothers moving to Campbeltown in the early part of the 20th century and founding West Coast Motors in 1923, William’s stewardship of the company saw it grow substantially.
During the eulogy, his brother, Robert H Craig, said: They say there’s more than one universe. If that’s right, they may need transport and the man to organise a Service 926 between them arrived a few days ago. [Service 926 is the company's four hour signature and stunningly scenic route from Campbeltown in Kintyre to Glasgow.
His brother explained why William was always 'William'. His father, one of the founding brothers, was evidently known as Billy or Bill and, determined that he was not himself going to become known as 'Old Bill', his son was always to be called by his full name.
In a warm and fond service on what the Reverend Catriona Hood described as 'a tender day', Robert Craig's eulogy painted his brother's private life filled with sporting ability and incident. A gifted athlete, William's record at Strathallan School for the 400 yards stood from 1955 to 1979 - when the format changed to 400 metres, leaving him the holder of a record which will never be broken.
Living in Campbeltown, with the Loch on the doorstep, the start of Campbeltown Sailing Club saw a clearly natural sportsman take to the water with lifelong enthusiasm.
Sailing first a Loch Long 6, William Craig's became the first sailboat to be torpedoed by the Royal Navy, which used Loch Long for torpedo training . The Navy rebuilt his boat, putting a brass plaque at the point where the rogue torpedo had hit.
Racing round the buoys in Campbeltown Loch, with the Reverend Young as his crew, gamely lying on the foredeck manually holding out the Genny on downwind legs [spinnakers and bearing spars were apparently not allowed], the weekly results posted in The Campbeltown Courier regularly saw Scirocco the winning boat.
Moving to cruisers and with family holidays under sail becoming the norm, Jennifer Craig, William’s wife, has spoken of passing babies in baskets from the quayside to the boat along with the rest of the supplies for a west coast expedition.
Robert Craig reported that, following three wet Glasgow Fairs in a row, Jennifer mutinied – and the family holidays on the water were henceforth in the Mediterranean.
One anecdote in the eulogy took a lot of people by surprise – with considerable interest evident in the number of conversations this figured in as the congregation filed out of the church.
The only West Coast Motors bus ever to go to Europe was driven by William himself – with no co-driver and was a school trip abroad. A footnote to envy is that he never had an accident, either in his professional or personal driving.
By all accounts and reinforced by his brother, the power of the successful businessman – which William Craig always wore lightly, was balanced by the gentleness of someone who was profoundly Christian, an elder in the Springbank Evangelical Church – and who was always concerned for the wellbeing of the staff.
They were there in their numbers, members of the company’s workforce from the many places where it bases its operations on the Scottish west coast, north to Skye, west out to the islands of Bute and Mull and east to Edinburgh airport from Glasgow, with headquarters in Campbeltown. They represented the core business of coach services and the new marine transport initiative, Kintyre Express, introduced by William’s son, Colin, who took over from William as Managing Director when William moved to the chairmanship of the company some years ago.
The extended Craig family were there with Jennifer, three sons and a daughter, Ian, Caroline, Colin and John, their wives and children. The two elder sons each read material from the bible that touched closely on their father’s nature and faith.
The three generation present were perhaps the achievement of which William Craig was proudest, that in a long and strong marriage he and Jennifer had built a family that seems the essence of what family is ideally meant to be. That sense of ‘family’ extends to the workforce and wider again to the Campbeltown community.
At the end of the church service, one grieving member of the staff said it all: ‘I’m missing a friend’.
