Chairman of Well-Being Australia Mark Tronson says it has been his privilege to have been a recipient of many 'Angels Unawares' leading up to and during his 18 years of founding the Sports and Leisure Ministry, 17 years as the Australian cricket team chaplain, and now 29 years of faith financial living.
One of these Angels Unawares was Wayne Tremain.
Mark Tronson picks up the story: It was a very sad occasion when I conducted the funeral service of my dear friend Wayne Tremain who passed to Glory as a result of cancer when 58 in 2004 on the Sunshine Coast.
I often think of Wayne as he was a larger than life character, a brilliant smile and a hearty disposition. He was an executive, a corporate sleuth who excelled in introducing new product ideas.
Enterprises included artificial grass for play grounds, hockey fields and tennis courts; a sound proofing material along freeways through the suburbs; another was race horse stall padding and race track winners path ways.
Wayne and his wife Norelle, (whom I conducted their marriage ceremony), also spent some years in Kentucky with the racing industry and I spent some time with them there.
My first meeting with Wayne related to a hockey article I wrote prior to the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics on how artificial hockey fields would change hockey forever. Wayne having read my Sydney newspaper article made contact, inviting me to meet him in his Sydney office.
I called in on a day I was at Gore Bay oil tank terminal ministering as Industrial Padre (Shell Australia) and had on my clerical collar. I can still see Wayne's face now as I was ushered in – this was the least likely hockey writer he'd ever expected !!
As I was a non-drinker, wining and dining went out the window, it wasn't on the agenda! I quickly discovered however, he was 'deep down' a very serious man searching out meaning for his life, and over a period of time I became his one-to-one Chaplain.
We spent many hours together over many years and I found Wayne to be like many Australian men. Brash and bold on the outside, but under the surface, a man who pondered and considered much and became followers of Christ in their own way.
It was from this ministry to Wayne Tremain that my Executive Ministries was established. Moreover Heads of Churches supported my Executive Ministries model.
It was from this in 1986 Reverend Dr Gordon Moyes became the Chaplain to the Office of the Prime Ministership, through my Executive Ministries. He writes of this in his autobiography "Gordon Moyes – Leaving a Legacy" pages 58-61.
Executive Ministries still plays an extensive part of my ministries. Wayne Tremain was indeed an Angel Unawares.