Neville Kennard, R.I.P.

by Jay Baykal on June 5, 2012

Neville Kennard, R.I.P.

My dear friend Neville Kennard died on June 3, 2012, at the age of 74. I first met Nev about 4 years ago. Out of the blue, he had contacted me, briefly introduced himself, and asked if he could attend the 2008 Property and Freedom Society meeting in Bodrum. He came to Bodrum again in 2009 and 2010, and we – he, his wife Gaby, Gulcin and I – met again in Istanbul, in January of 2011. Nev had then planned to come back in May to attend our 2011 PFS meeting, but he had to cancel in the last minute, because he had been diagnosed with melanoma and required urgent surgery. Everything appeared to go well after that, or so it seemed. In November of 2011, we met in Australia. Nev had sponsored my trip to Sydney to be the keynote speaker at the first Australian Mises Seminar and Conference. At the time he appeared full of energy and enthusiasm and was looking forward to another trip to Bodrum. But in January, he wrote me that the cancer had returned and he would be unable to come. He did not indicate how serious the matter was, however, and so I was in complete shock when I learned, only a couple of weeks ago, from his son Sam and his wife Gaby that Nev was about to die.

Nev was an enormously successful self-made Australian businessman, a sailor, aviator, globetrotter and adventurer. He was unpretentious. He traveled with only a handbag and, while in Turkey, for example, he crisscrossed the country by bus and train. From his appearance and conduct you never would have guessed that he was a man of great wealth. He was extremely well read, immensely curious and always full of ideas and plans. He was a hard-core Rothbardian, an uncompromising anarcho-capitalist, and a formidable intellectual fighter. He loved and he hated all the right people. He was a great supporter of the Property and Freedom Society and its most generous donor. In the short time that we knew each other Nev and I had become very close friends. I feel blessed to have known a great man, and I will sorely miss him.

My thoughts go out to his family, to his wife Gaby, to his sons Sam, Walt and Jim, and to his brother Andy.

Benjamin Marks has written a moving tribute to the great Neville Kennard:

http://economics.org.au/2012/06/neville-kennard-obituary/

Hans-Hermann Hoppe