Monday, December 04, 2006 Aerobatic show highlights burial of slain British pilot
SIX light planes - five Cessna and one Piper - hovered above the Cebu Memorial Park and dropped confetti as British pilot Roy Malcolm Bruce was laid to rest.
“He was our everything. We will not have a happier Christmas with his loss,” Kirstie, the eldest of Bruce’s four children, said in an eulogy after a requiem mass officiated by Msgr. Roberto Alesna at the Redemptorist Parish church yesterday afternoon.
British Consul Moya Jackson and City Councilor Jack Sylvan Jakosalem were among the government officials present.
Jakosalem said Bruce was excited about the idea of performing an aerobatic show during the Sinulog festival next year. They were supposed to finalize the plans in a meeting this week.
Bruce and his mechanic Romy Ofelia died in a plane crash last Nov. 25. Bruce was practicing loops and spirals with his favorite Flugzeugbau Extra 300 two-seater, single-engine plane, when it nosedived into 15-foot-deep waters off South Road Properties (SRP).
He was recognized as one of the two pilots in the country that possess special skills in aviation. The other is Meynard Halili, who emailed his eulogy to Bruce’s wife Lisa.
Yesterday, the planes did the “missing formation” as they flew above Cempark. While the planes were in formation, one of them left the group, signifying the loss. It was the pilots’ salute to a dead comrade.
In his eulogy read by Jakosalem, Halili said he and Roy had performed air shows together at the Balloon Fiesta at the Omni Field beside Clark Airbase in Pampanga. Bruce loved to exhibit high performance vertical maneuvers with his Extra 300 plane.
Bruce loved his craft, but he loved it more to talk about his family, especially his eldest daughter Kirstie, who is pursuing an aviation-related college course in England. (AIV)
