A good man passes

An tribute by Chris Cork which can be seen in full here.

Few people in Pakistan outside the circle of those that worked with him will have heard of William Bingley who died on Sunday – but many thousands have good reason to be grateful to him. I have known William since October 2005 when I first worked with the Abaseen Foundation, a Pakistani-British NGO that works in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa. I had travelled down to Peshawar from my base north of Gilgit and was a bit travel-weary – and stained – when William opened the door of his hotel room to me and started a friendship that I valued from the outset. I had gone to meet him and other members of the Abaseen Foundation to help them with their post-earthquake work. Thus it was that I met Dr Mukhtiar, and Obaidullah and The Brigadier – and Helen Bingley, wife of William and all the others who give selflessly of their time and energies to help the poor and needy people of some of the poorest and neediest parts of Pakistan.

We got to know one another sitting around the breakfast table, and I gradually found my place in Abaseen, working closely with them when William and Helen were in Pakistan which they were every year, sometimes more often. William was chief executive of the organisation in the UK, a post to which he was admirably suited with his background as a lawyer and as chairman of one of the very large health trusts that manage and deliver health care in England.

He was a big man in every sense of the word, but exuded a kind of unassuming humility that was disarming and engaging at the same time. William could give the impression of listening to you even when he wasn’t, and when you thought he wasn’t listening to you then you would quickly discover that he was. He had a lively enquiring mind that roamed everywhere, and an appreciation of the finer things of life alongside a beguiling sense of humour. There was never a dull day with William.

In the years that I knew him and Helen and the Abaseen Foundation in Pakistan it has grown from being a ‘single project’ NGO to being a significant partner with the government of K-P in health service delivery as well as having developed a disaster response facility. It was in that context that I last saw William. We visited several projects supported by AF(PK) in Swat valley last October. The valley was recovering from warfare and the floods of 2010; and everywhere we went William was there, bent attentively to listen to what local people wanted to do and looking at what they had done with the money raised in the UK and here in Pakistan. Thousands had benefited from the repair of a water channel that had been swept away. Many more thousands at the schools for brick-kiln children and hospitals and health centres that Abaseen PK now manages.

And now William is gone. He died out walking in the countryside he loved with Helen – who he equally loved – on Sunday morning. I learned of his death in an email on Monday morning, and have reflected on our friendship since. Just occasionally in our lives we meet people who it is truly a privilege to know, and for me William Bingley was one such. His legacy in Pakistan will be unobtrusive, unnoticed by most, and that is the way he would have wanted it. William did not do ‘flashy’. What he did do was do good, and Pakistan can mourn the passing of that rarest of creatures – a truly good man.