A family has paid tribute to a determined adventurer who died last month in a helicopter crash in the Swiss Alps.
James 'Jimmy' Davis-Goff, whose parents live in Glen Helen, was one of three people who died in the tragic accident on Petit Combin mountain on April 2.
The Air Glaciers helicopter was taking a guide and four visitors to a drop-off point for skiers when the chopper crashed at the mountain-top landing site and slide down the northern slope.
An investigation by the Swiss Safety Investigation Service is ongoing. Jimmy, 34, a qualified ski instructor and former United Nations project development officer, had just graduated from his post-grad at Columbia University in New York City when he died.
A day or two before he’d had an interview, by Zoom from Switzerland, for a job at the British Red Cross.
He is survived by his partner Joyce Raboca, his parents Sir Robert and Lady (Sheelagh) Davis-Goff, siblings William, Sarah and Henry, and extended family.
Jimmy was born in Dublin but his family moved to isolated Eairy Moar farm, above Glen Helen, in early 1997.
He spent all his childhood there with his siblings.
However, he went to boarding school in Ireland, and then at Gordonstoun in Scotland, followed by universities and United Nations-allied jobs all over the world.
His father Robert said: ‘Eairy Moar was his home, very important to him, but it was a place to come back to.
‘He was meticulous about his right to vote here, and paying tax here, and having worked in parts of the world, he highly valued and appreciated the island’s old democracy, and stable, fair way of life.’
Jimmy was someone who lived life to the full, travelling and working in the four corners of the world, including Indonesia, Zimbabwe and Iraq and studying in San Francisco, New York and the Netherlands.
He earned a diploma in bomb disposal in Kosovo, qualified as a ski instructor with European Snowsport and did a stint at a camp officer on a game reserve in South Africa.
He worked for the United Nations for three years and seven months, initially as a project officer in Zimbabwe and then as a project development and reporting officer in Lebanon.
Recently last year, while in the island working on a Columbia University assignment, he joined a boxing club here.
Jimmy worked hard at his own fitness, running down to Glen Helen regularly and then back up , a steep climb.
It was this fitness level, and determination, that enabled him to climb the Matterhorn for the Lebanon Red Cross.
A typical quiet achievement was setting up a refugee camp kitchen charity in Tripoli, Lebanon
His siblings have donated his best motorcycle, a newish Moto Guzzi, to this project - while his old Suzuki SV 650 has been kept at the farm as a memento.
As a child he developed a pronounced stutter but overcame that to win prizes for public speaking in school which reflected his determined nature.
He had planned to work in the UK, in large part so he could be closer to Joyce who works as a lawyer in Paris.
Joyce said: ‘Jimmy spread pure joy to everyone everywhere he went - which was a lot of places. There was no stopping the man.
‘He loved shooting, and cars and bikes and the outdoors, He always brought more energy to a party than he ever took away.
‘He dedicated his life to helping not just those he knew but also those he never met or would meet. He genuinely loved his family, friends and everyone in between.’
