Last week at the Rogers house there was the launching of the biography of Amede Maingard, Behind enemy line with the SAS. He was the visionary who founded the Tourism industry and Air Mauritius.

I had the privilege to have known the man and worked for him. Before I finished school because of the friendship which bonded my Dad and Amede Maingard, I was asked by my Dad to go and visit Amede Maingard in his office at Rogers which in those days was at Sir W. Newton Street. It was the 13^th December 1966; I met him for the first time. He was a man with a smile on his face with an impressive look. Man of only a few words, I was impressed by the way he would look at me. I would sense a lot of sympathy in his glance whilst at the same time I could make out that he was a great strategist with a calculating mind. On that very day, I joined Rogers & company where I spent 38 years of enjoyable service until my retirement.

Amede Maingard commands respect as he would only express his views after having heard all the opinions and done his own thinking. Always calm in his manners, he was a no time waster. He was the authority and would not accept to be contradicted. His war years gave him an aversion to anything German. I recall how he reacted when we spoke of the operation of Lufthansa to Mauritius. He left this world too early and did not see the fruit of his work at Air Mauritius with the operations of B747 SP and the boom of the Tourism industry in the years past the 80’s. He planted the seeds, saw to it that the buds got off the ground but did not live to see the fruit of his determination and vision.