A good and modest man.....

Knowing Peter Yeo's reputation, I also had a pretty good inkling what his first words would be when confronted with somebody who wanted to write a story about him.

It would go like this: "Please don't say too much about me. I don't want this to draw attention to me personally. Lots of people have contributed to all the things I've taken part in."

Sure enough, the first time that Peter opened his mouth, those very lines came out, almost word perfect.

A day after talking to me, still anxious, he rang again, asking for some lines to be added to this article. The statement he read out was once again an attempt to draw attention away from himself and pay tribute to others.

In deference to his wishes, and also as they give some idea of the man, they are: "Many thanks to all who have supported our fundraising events and members who have worked so hard."

Yet all this was hardly necessary. Nobody with even a nodding acquaintance of Peter is going to imagine he is on any sort of ego trip. Peter is a good man, and among his virtues is a substantial modesty and a pressing desire to hide his light under a bushel.

He also has a wife of 40 years, a down-to-earth local girl who does not want her first name in print, and has told him in no uncertain terms "to keep my trap shut and keep a low profile."

He hardly needs such persuasion: "I'm not a flamboyant character who works upfront, I'm more a background person."

Nevertheless, circumstances have dragged the backroom boy into the limelight.

Among Peter's most pressing desires at the moment is to promote the Rotary Club, particularly the Wickford branch, of which he is president this year.

Talking about himself, he is ill at ease. Talking about the Rotary Club he becomes a different person, positively vociferous indeed.

"Please can we talk about the Rotary and what it achieves, not me," he pleads. Nevertheless, a good way to examine the Rotary is to look at a typical member, and whether he likes it or not, Peter is one of the best starting points you could find.

A Rotary Club motto is: "It is not enough to do nothing bad. I must consciously strive to do good." Peter's own version, which crops up more than once in his conversation, is: Don't just sit there, do something about it.

Peter's doings in pursuit of this maxim have verged on the spectacular.

This week he has embarked on a challenging feat, and one that can't help but get those dreaded media cameras flashing the Yeo mugshot. He has chosen to trundle 1,000 miles from John O'Groats to Land's End in an open-topped Model T Ford owned by friend and fellow Rotarian Mick Kemp to raise £20,000 for the London Chest Hospital.

"It is an enormous amount for an area like Wickford to raise. But you see a need and you know you just have to do something," says Peter. The money will replace one of the hospital's 20-year-old intensive care monitors.

This boneshaking voyage would test a lot of people, but Peter is a veteran of long, uncomfortable and even dangerous road journeys.

In the Bosnian war he made no less than nine truck journeys taking relief supplies to the conflict zone. "I was just determined. I HAD to get out there," he says.

The trips were inevitably harrowing and, although Peter doesn't tell the story that way, quite dangerous. Yet there was never any doubt as to their value.

"One time," he recalls, "we stopped beside an elderly couple at the side of the road. The man was a carpenter."

The couple had been burnt out of their home. The old man wanted to rebuild the house, but his tools were lost.

"We had a box of tools we were able to give him," Peter says. His voice drops. "What can you say when you see a grown man literally crying over tools? Yet these were somebody elses's leftovers."

As Peter returned again and again to the war zone, he admits his business suffered. He is a successful dental technician who supplies practices from east London to Southend. Typically, he sees his work as a way to help those who need all the help they can.

"There are people who are sometimes in great distress," he says, "people who have been everywhere for relief, and we are able to help them."

He discovered his vocation early in life when a friend showed him a dental lab and "I saw the work involved and just knew that was what I wanted to do." His reputation "just grew".

In a sense, Peter Yeo, Bal-kan conflict veteran, has his own conflict. Devoted to his work, he also feels the pull of other needs. "I joined the Round Table when I was 28 and since then working for these clubs has certainly taken my life over, to an extent which surprises me as much as anybody," he admits.

It's impossible to emerge from an hour with Peter without a quiet sense of elation and a pepped-up view of humanity.

A serene and composed man, who seems quietly happy, he says of his work and Rotary activities: "It's not a matter of what we've gained: it's what we've gained from it."

Helping others -- Peter Yeo with the Model T Ford in which he'll travel from John O'Groats to Land's End to raise money for an intensive care monitor

Picture: ANDY PALMER

Converted for the new archive on 19 November 2001. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.