The 1950s and the entire Besnard family, including young Mick, immediately to the left of grandmother Besnard, get together on the beach. (0594443)

I GUESS we all want to be remembered in some way and not just by the immediate family.

Mick Le Pelley is no different and long after his predicted demise this year – doctors have told him he will not see another Christmas – his influence in many areas of island life will live on.

His former company – Granite Le Pelley – will be just one element.

His drive towards setting up the new Guernsey Shooting Federation will be another.

A fantastic £1m-plus property at Bon Port, which he and partner Sue built and moved into earlier this year, will be another. It will be jealously eyed up by islanders for many years to come and with its superb granite work, so it should be.

The former stonemason, 62 on the last day of September, has terminal lung cancer and a particularly aggressive form. His time is short and specialists do not expect him to toast another new year, although his aim is to prove them wrong.

He’s as 100% ‘Guern’ as you get and fiercely proud of his heritage, one that links him to two of the island’s longest occupations – stone work and farming.

It’s 22 years since he sold out to the Garenne Group and since then he has ‘gone back to my roots’ and operated an agricultural contracting business as well as dabbling with his other hobby – farming – and working on his new house.

The stonework at Le Val de la Becasse [meaning The Valley of the Woodcock] in Les Aubrets, close to Bon Port Hotel, is fantastic.

Donald Le Pelley, Mick’s father, was heavyweight boxing champion of Guernsey. (0596192)

Built in typical Guernsey style, its colouring is varied and features many interesting characteristics such as pigeonholes, witches’ stones, rounded corners, both concave and convex, a rounded chimney and a typical Guernsey archway around the front door, all of which is pointed with a lime mortar.

‘From planning, it has taken me two-and-a-half years.

‘I’ve done virtually all the granite work. It’s come out really well,’ he said. And anybody who passes the new property will see just that.

With a name like Le Pelley, it will surprise no one that his background is in farming and the move into stonework was not planned, stemming from personal tragedy.

Had his father, Donald, not been killed, crushed in a tractor accident at Rectory Hill, who knows what might have been for his only, sport-loving son.

It was an early summer Saturday afternoon, 20 May 1961, and the

14-year-old budding cricketer was waiting to bat at the Memorial Field when the man Mick adored was taken from him by a freak accident.

‘I’d been selected for the Grammar School first XI against Elizabeth College, alongside Henry Davey, Chris Parker and Geoff Martel among others.

‘I was sat on the bench waiting to bat when my sister [Maureen] came across the Memorial Field and straight away I knew something was wrong.’

Nothing could have been more wrong.

While at the wheel of his tractor, the 40-year-old farming and haulage contractor had been crushed when his machine overturned, landing on top of him. He had been working at a pig farm field opposite Castel Church, where six of the last seven generations of Le Pelleys have married.

It was just a short distance from his home

‘It was a compound fracture of his skull, so he must have died instantly,’ says the only son for whom losing a father to whom he had been incredibly close was a disaster.

In 1961 Donald Le Pelley is killed when his tractor goes over, left. 0595160

Naturally, it hit Mick and his mother and sister hard, not to mention his paternal grandparents, who had seen their third son taken away from them.

Brother Edward had lived just a few days, while another boy, Lloyd, had died from meningitis aged 12.

‘That was a huge trauma in my life.

Dad was a huge, great bloke… a real gentle giant.

‘I spent a lot of time with dad. You could say I lived in his pocket.

Whenever he was out on the tractor, I was on a mudguard or sitting alongside him.’

He remembers him as a popular man, running a business similar to that of his good friend, Bob Froome.

‘I think he’d have had a similar [successful] operation to Bob’s if he had lived.

‘He commanded respect and if he walked into a pub, everybody would want to talk to him. He weighed 18 or 19 stone and there was not an ounce of fat on him.

‘I went haymaking with him in summer and on a winter Saturday would go to football with him.

‘Then I’d sit outside the E and G [English and Guernsey pub] with a bag of chips and the Football Press to read, waiting for him.

‘That was a typical Saturday. I had longed for the day I could go in with him, but it never happened, unfortunately.’

At the time of his death and after a number of jobs, Donald had finally settled down to being a successful haulage and agricultural contractor.

Away from work he was heavily involved with football, running the North Jackson and Railway teams, while in the summer he would pull for the St Anthony’s tug-of-war team.

Teenager Mick on the back of ‘Dido’ Mechem’s Velocette 350 outside the Wayside Cheer in pre-crash helmet days. A few weeks after this picture was taken, Mechem with the James Dean looks was killed as the same bike hit a wall at the Ivy Gates. His girlfriend, Joan Iniguez, also died in the accident. (0595983)

Years later, Mick was to follow suit on the rope and was a long-time member of the highly successful Farmers’ TOW team.

In his younger years, Donald had been a talented boxer, winning the local heavyweight title when the sport was second in popularity only to football.

One of his toughest bouts was a defeat to the fearsome and hard-as-nails Jonny Veron.

Donald’s death had unpredicted repercussions for his son.

‘It changed my life.

‘I left school immediately – I never went back.

‘Come September I was working at Lilyvale Motors to learn the mechanical side of the business with the intention of getting involved when I could legally drive.

‘But it became too much for my mother to run and it was subsequently sold.’

While still a young man, he went to work as an apprentice stonemason for Gordon Ferbrache and through personal tragedy, doors were starting to open for him.

But not before a second person, also very important to him, had been cruelly taken away, which ‘hit me hard’.

‘I had become a good friend of David [Dido] Mechem and two years after my dad died, he was killed in a motorbike accident at the Ivy Gates.

It was a double whammy.

‘Dido had the film star looks, he had a fantastic personality and at sport he could do anything. He was a Boys’ Own hero.’

Mick served a four-to five-year stonemason’s apprenticeship and was soon running his own little business which, in time, developed into the highly-successful Granite Le Pelley operation, which he sold in 1986 and took up farming.

‘I had been brought up in farming and all the time I was in stonework, I was always interested in the farm, keeping a few animals.’

After tractor driving with Mark Taylor, he subsequently set up his own agricultural contracting business, which he ran for 12 years.

‘I was going back to my roots, you could say.’

Mick the skilled shooter. (0431405)

Away from business, Mick’s involvement in sport was growing.

‘It’s been a big part of my life. I think I’ve represented Guernsey in five different ones – football [schoolboys in 1960 and juniors in 1965], air rifle, clay pigeon shooting, tug of war and the veteran squash team.’

He has shot at Commonwealth Games level in Manchester and has been a driving force in getting the new Guernsey Shooting Federation off the ground.

He also served as president of both the Clay Target Shooting Club and the Guernsey Squash Rackets Association.

As he struggles to cope with the draining effects of his cancer treatment, he looks back with great pride on his time in stonemasonry and the legacy of it and a couple of achievements few islanders will have sought, let alone achieved.

‘I’m one of only two in Guernsey to have achieved a woodcock left-right double – in the shooting world akin to a hole-in-one – twice.

‘Francis Russell is the other and I’ve managed to do it once here and once in Ireland.’

Just as satisfying, arguably more so, was breeding a top beef animal.

‘I have kept beef cattle for 30 years and had always wanted to win the Fat Stock Show. And after a long time, about 20 years, I finally did it.’

But it is stone, and best utilising Guernsey’s spectacular granite varieties, that is his legacy – and it will be around for a long time.

‘It’s a satisfying job and the job you do is there forever and a day.

‘I’m proud my name is associated with such a well-established and prestigious island firm. It still gives me a buzz to see my name on the lorries.’

Mick married Jean on 18 May 1967 and they have a son, Donald, and daughter, Lara.