About 200 mourners paid their last respects on Thursday to Brian Alexander Wilson, 72, one of three people to lose their lives in last week’s Dungog floods.
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The service at ChristChurch Anglican Church, Dungog, was conducted by Reverend Colvin Ford, with contributions by NSW Disaster Recovery Network chaplain Susan Phelan and Dungog RSL sub branch vice president Jim Olsen.
In a poignant gesture late in the ceremony, more than 20 retired and active service personnel left their pews to put paper poppies on Mr Wilson’s coffin, symbolising the 339 days the Vietnam veteran spent in the army in 1968 and 1969.
Reverend Ford said Mr Wilson, a retired boilermaker who fixed and sold lawn mowers from a shed at the back of his unit, was well-known in the town.
He said one of Mr Wilson’s children, Tamara Carsley, had become “the face of Dungog’’ after the storm.
He paid tribute to her for recovering her father’s medals and marching with them on Saturday at Anzac Day.
RSL sub-branches from across the Hunter Region sent representatives to the funeral, which included a reading from Psalm 23.
