Dean Signal reckoned he was in something of a unique position, career-wise.
Dean Signal’s casket leaves the hall, led by Linda Fell who conducted the farewell. Photo: Viv Posselt
“I have hundreds of people underneath me, but I never receive a complaint,” he’d often say. As sexton for Cambridge’s three cemeteries, he was bang on.
Dean’s humour was memorable, but it was the loyalty, passion and empathy he brought to the job that filled the Cambridge Town Hall to capacity last week as the town farewelled a man who had buried many of their own.
As they filed up to thank Dean for taking special care of their loved ones, the stories trickled out.
He would talk to those he had buried, particularly to the children… just to make sure they were comfortable. Many was the time he couldn’t sleep at night worrying that the grave he dug that day might collapse before the service the following day.
Dean Signal … the genial sexton who eased his way into Cambridge’s heart. Photo: supplied
He loved animals as much as people, and one day leapt over a fence to recover a duck hit by a vehicle. “That is one of my cemetery ducks,” he told a slightly bemused friend as he dug a hole and gently buried the duck in its home turf.
A deep compassion for others drove every action. His sister Adele remembered the day the oncologist told Dean that he had a rare form of cancer.
“Dean leaned forward and said to him, ‘your job must be so very hard, having to deliver news like that to people’,” she said. “The oncologist was quite overcome … he said never in his career had that happened to him. That was just Dean’s nature.
Born in 1961, his early years were spent in Upper Hutt, then Tokoroa; the family moved to Cambridge when Dean was seven.
Sally Sheedy
His parents’ marriage break-up when he was at Cambridge Intermediate unsettled him and he left high school early, shifting through a variety of occupations before joining Waipā District Council as sexton in October 1992.
Those at his funeral – among them Waipā mayor Susan O’Regan and many council employees – heard how the job became his ‘soul food’. It seems he had found his place in the world. Dean stayed there until declining health saw him leave just one day shy of his 30th anniversary.
It was Sally Sheedy, council’s customer and community services group manager, who revealed Dean’s oft-spoken quote about the numbers underneath him.
Others alluded to the fact Dean knew where every resident in those cemeteries lay… he became part of their continuing family story.
Brad Webb
Waipā community services manager Brad Ward remembered Dean’s antics, alluding to the day when he invited Dean to be part of a media interview after skid marks had appeared in the pristine cemetery.
“There was some colourful language from him! I just glazed over … he was a really good man.”
Council library staffer Kym Kearns spoke warmly of her memories of Dean, of shared times doing things sure to stir the ire of council officials but which were deliciously good fun anyway.
If anything could stand as testimony to a humble man measured by his humour and compassion for others, it was that crowd at the Town Hall last Friday.
For a moment they all stepped into Shakespeare’s Hamlet where the graveside quote starting “Alas, poor Yorick” speaks to a man described as ‘a fellow of infinite jest, and of most excellent fancy’.
That was Dean Signal to a ‘t’.
Dean’s cortège left the Town Hall escorted by several motorbikes ridden by friends and family. Photo: Viv Posselt
