They will play the bagpipes and trumpet when they say goodbye to Frank Bayne.
The 49-year-veteran of the Canadian Armed Forces who went to great efforts to educate young people in Guelph about Canada’s role in the Korean War, passed away recently. He was 92.
“Boy, was he a good guy,” said friend Jacques DeWinter, who met Bayne 14 years ago through the Guelph Legion’s weekly veterans’ coffee hour.
“For a guy with a chest full of medals, he was a really nice fella’,” DeWinter said.
Legion president Roy Fagel said Bayne took it upon himself to help spread the word about the Korean War.
Bayne served 14 months in Korea and was a past-president of the Korean Veterans Association of Canada.
Fagel said Bayne loved talking with students the most and remembers him sitting with a group of St. James high school students recently who had refurbished the legion’s white wooden crosses that it places on its lawn in memory of Canadian soldiers killed in Afghanistan.
“He sat down with those students, talking to them all. He just loved talking to them,” Fagel said.
“He was a real gentleman. He’s going to be missed by everyone here.”
Bayne joined the army at 16. He eventually served as a gunner, helicopter pilot, base safety officer, flight instructor, reservist and was a member of the Royal Canadian Legion for over 55 years.
Sixty years after he fought in Korea, Bayne returned there for a visit.
"Sixty years after I left the Korean people are still saying 'thank you for saving my country,'" Bayne said in 2013 when he was the keynote speaker at the Remembrance Day service at the Sleeman Centre.
He was always bothered by the fact people referred to the Korean War as a ‘police action’ or ‘conflict.’
"It sure as hell sounded like a war to me," Bayne said at that same Remembrance Day event. "Canadians distinguished themselves in all these battles."
Bayne is survived by his wife and four daughters, three step-daughters, 20 grandchildren and 19 great-grandchildren.
