Stunned!

Just heard yesterday that Tio Jim has died. He was having a hip replacement operation in Mexico and died due to complications. Totally stunned - he was so fit and vital. Seems unreal that I was there only two months ago staying with him & Bettina, laughing and really enjoying life. Bloody harsh.

Here's a picture I'll cherish.


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Obituary from the Guadalajara Reporter (23/12/2006):

James Rigby
Longtime Lakeside resident James Rigby died suddenly December 14 after suffering complications from a surgical procedure. He was 67.

Rigby was born in Liverpool, England in 1939. After spending the years of World War II on the Isle of Man with his family, he returned to Liverpool in 1946 to study prep school, later continuing his education at Stonyhurst College. He received a law degree in England and went on to study international law at the Sorbonne in Paris. He practiced law briefly in San Francisco, California and later in Vancouver, Canada where he also earned his pilot’s license. He then embarked on an extraordinary worldwide adventure, beginning with a tour by sports car down the Pan-American Highway through Mexico, Central and South America.

During an extended stay in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) he was involved in the founding of Silveira House, a distinguished Catholic social institution to teach the poor self-sufficiency through agriculture.Rigby later traveled through India and Afghanistan by bus and by camel, and then to Palestine, Israel and Europe. After three years on the road, he decided to settle in Mexico in 1970. It was a country that attracted him with its irresistible beauty. He moved to the Chapala area in 1979 to take up strawberry farming and later launched into exporting tropical fruit products.

Rigby was a great athlete throughout his life, playing rugby and cricket as a youth and becoming an avid tennis player and golfer in his later years. Above all, he was a devoted family man who advised his offspring to live by the tenet: “We are only in this world to increase the love that is around us; all the rest is nothing more than mundane trappings."

Rigby is survived by his devoted wife Bettina; two daughters, Marianne Rigby of Luis Obispo, California and Gabriela Rigby of Ajijic, both by his first wife Annabelle Fernandez, of Guadalajara. He also leaves behind three young grandsons and two brothers, Mark Rigby of Ixtlahuacan de los Membrillos and Paul Rigby of Ottawa, Canada.

Family and many friends gathered to bid him farewell at a funeral mass celebrated Friday, December 15 at Ajijic’s San Andres church. Gifts in his memory will be welcomed by the Mision San Pablo home for children who have lost their parents to AIDS, a charity which he and his wife have supported with great dedication.
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