OBIT: Only a week before he died, Warren Sly was sandblasting and staining chairs in the Thames Hospital garden.
The task was quintessentially Warren. The 77-year-old engineer, inventor, and well-known community volunteer never stopped dreaming or doing.
A lifelong aviation enthusiast, Warren spent years building his own plane, but health setbacks meant he never fulfilled his ambition of taking it to the skies. His wife Jeweline said he had only recently admitted that he would probably never get the chance.
But though this particular dream remained unfinished, countless others became reality through his work.
Warren died peacefully at Thames Hospital on June 26, surrounded by family.
His lifetime of innovation saw him turn ideas into practical solutions, with inventions including a hydraulic elevating head bed, a potato digger, berry harvester, bifold undercarriage doors for his aircraft, and gun ports. He later established a hydraulic business in Napier, designing and building a flying fox for a parade and a cricket bowling machine, while also designing bridges during his engineering career.
In Thames, that same ingenuity was poured into the community.
Over the past decade, he had served as the club captain of the Hauraki Aero Club, and project-managed the installation of the Hurricane aircraft display at the Thames Airfield, designing both its tripod stand and the stand for the statue of Sir Keith Park underneath.
He was president of the Thames Rotary Club for three years; a founding member and president of the Thames Community MenzShed, and the president of the Thames RSA.
He designed and built the cycle shelters along the Hauraki Rail Trail, a project that grew to include 16 shelters across the Thames-Coromandel and Hauraki districts.
Among Warren’s “grand designs” that never came to fruition was a boat wash, similar to a car wash, that boats could pass through when leaving or arriving at the marina. He also worked alongside Thames engineer Max Bosselman on a system to help prevent flooding in Grahamstown after being seconded onto a council committee looking at climate change.
At his well-attended funeral at Twentyman’s Grahamstown Chapel on July 2, Jeweline and son Phillip shared stories that captured the many sides of Warren, from his engineering brilliance and big ideas, to the humour and quirks that made him so loved.
Phillip fondly recalled family ski trips to Mount Ruapehu, where Warren continued to wear his favourite tight blue 1970s ski suit well into the 2000s.
There was also the beige 1980s Volvo, the grease-stained polo shirts, and a man who would talk “with anyone for hours”. Warren’s piano playing was another defining part of family life, Phillip said.
“It was always hard to study when dad was rattling the ivories, banging out an energetic rendition of If I Were a Rich Man from Fiddler on the Roof,” he recalled. “Dad, I can hear you now.”
Phillip said Warren believed that “to truly make a difference, you need to have skin in the game” – and it was a philosophy he lived by.
While his dad leaves behind a long legacy of completed passion projects, and sadly a few unfinished ones, his contribution to Thames will live on through the many projects, organisations, and people he supported.
And although he never got to take to the skies in his plane, the mark he left across the district has reached far beyond the runway.
BY KELLEY TANTAU
Warren Sly, a lifelong aviation enthusiast, inventor, and community volunteer leaves behind a lasting legacy in Thames. FILE PHOTO: KELLEY TANTAU
