Ulrich Jurgens
Dear Rachel, Frank and John,
I am very sad and sorry to hear that Bob passed away. We never were really close but shared some experiences in our lives when Bob and I worked for Greenpeace.
We were running a campaign against some toxic waste transport together – I seem to remember. Bob was the campaigner and I was the master of the vessel GREENPEACE – both of us joking about the clever name the organisation had come up with. There was always something of a give-away when we had to announce our vessel’s name over the marine radio during a campaign…
In true old-Greenpeace fashion we blocked a port in the Oslo Fjord where the target cargo vessel was alongside. I cannot remember how it ended but we certainly legged it before the heavies arrived.
I loved Bob’s intelligent and organised anarchic approach (I know that does not really go together…). Those were my early days in Greenpeace and Bob was not the archetype of a Greenpeace person. His biting wit and funny comments about the politically correct world in which we both worked left me quite often laughing during those days at the beginning of the 90ies and the few times I met him afterwards.
The last we saw of each other – he probably might find that funny if he was still around – was at the funeral of another long term anarchic Greenpeace friend in Sussex some ten years ago.
Bob, now it’s your turn and you would probably come up with something bitingly funny about your own funeral without hiding your kindness towards your friends.
They say, the dead don’t care. The living ones do, though, and I’ll miss you. Take care on your eternal journey, Ulrich
Bob Edwards 1945-2016 