Larry Emdur has opened up on a difficult chapter in his life – the moments leading up to his father’s death.
The Morning Show host spoke about his father’s cause of death in a new episode of the Straight Talk with Mark Bouris podcast, and the important message he left behind.
“He was a very very heavy smoker. No getting around it,” the Channel Seven star revealed in the podcast.
“You want to sugarcoat, don’t you? But he was a very, very heavy smoker all of his life, and in the end it was sort of emphysema and a whole bunch of related issues,” he explained.
He revealed how his father, Dave, had always been a “great storyteller” and eventually used his talent to share his experience to others who may suffer from breathing problems and emphysema.
“He had all these great stories about how he’d go out on his little buggy and do wheelies and chase pretty girls up and down the beach,” Larry explained.
“He’d put his oxygen thing on, he’d go out with his buggy and go and get fish and chips and he still wanted to live the beach life,” he recalled.
“I said, ‘Dad, right, you should write these stories. They’re great stories’, because I was the journalist.”
Hi dad then teamed up with a magazine called Lung Net, and started writing a column called The Lighter Side.
“They’d print them and they got such a huge response to them – because you’re only reading that magazine for the latest research on, you know, lung conditions and deals on breathing equipment stuff,” Larry said.
“So all of a sudden, now there’s this column about funny stuff that happens to you.”
Larry added that it was a a “great legacy” for his father to leave behind.
“That was a great legacy from him to me to go, even when you’re feeling like that and you are dying, to be able to lighten people’s day, to be able to tell nice stories and make people smile,” he said.
“I thought that was a really really important message.”
Dave passed away two decades ago. In 2020, Larry penned an emotional letter to his dad as part of the Letters To My Mentor campaign by the Raise Foundation, helping vulnerable young people connect to mentors.
He admitted that writing the letter was a “confronting” process, as he wrote all the things he never got to say to his dad before he died.
“I had to leave and go and have a cry and come back and try it again,” he said in an interview with 7News.
“But it’s about finding someone and the strength that they gave you at various points in your life.
“To me, I realise my Dad was the guy that set me on the right path and was who I could lean on.
“People have all different sorts of mentoring experiences – but for me, that was Dad.”
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