Reginal "Reg" Paul Paffle

Born : 29th October, 1913 - Brighton, England

Died : 6th June, 2002 - Nambour, Queensland,Australia

1) Married to Edeline in 1938 - Sydney. Child : Leonie

Divorced : 1961

2) Married to Sylvia & later ended. Child: Helen

Parents : Paul & Ethel Pfaffle

Children : Leonie ( Pfaffle ) & Helen ( Forbes )

Nationality : Australian

In 1958 when Meher Baba visited Avatar's Abode in Queensland, Baba stated to all in the Meeting Hall that "Reg was my man".

When Reg passed away, it was 44 years to the day, when Meher Baba left the Abode.

Leonie Pfaffle, Reg Paffle's older daughter, wrote:

In 1919 Reg went with his German father, English mother & younger brother to live in Heidelberg Germany where he attended school six days a week, which was mandatory for all German children. He picked up the German language & became fluent, he learned to ‘skate’ on the frozen Neckar River & this became a love which he carried all his life. (He used to take me skating as a child to the ‘Glaceaireum’ skating rink in Sydney. One time after his stroke, he was watching the Winter Olympics skating & excitedly started telling me in German to come & watch the ‘ice dancing’).

After his father’s premature death from heart failure in 1924, his mother brought the two little boys back to England where they were enrolled in King Edward School, Witley. This was a charity school for training & educating the poor, with a proud history dating back to 1553. The boys wore Naval Uniforms & slept in hammocks. The discipline was harsh with drills & inspections. The mandatory curriculum was Reading, Writing, Maths, Geography, & History. Chapel was the focus for Religious Education where his voice was part of the choir from boy soprano to his later fine tenor.

The more senior years included workshops where the boys were trained in a trade or work area to which the teachers felt the boys were suited. As well as the academic education the boys were taught a variety of sports. As well as excelling academically Reg became very good at hurdling, cross country running & swimming, taught in the ‘inside’ Olympic size pool. Leaving school in 1931 with a full & extensive education behind him, he joined the Merchant Navy to see the world. During this time he learned to speak Spanish (when I was about five he taught me to count in both German & Spanish as well some every day phrases) & loved telling me of sailing down the Amazon River & seeing butterflies as big as dinner plates, & it was on these trips that he fell in love with ‘the Tango’, which led to him taking ballroom dancing classes back in London &, as his step sister Lena said, “he could have won championships he danced so beautifully!”

continued :

It was at this time of his life, now that he was a wage earner, that his lifelong love of horses came about as, with some friends, he took riding lessons & spent many happy hours when on home leave from his job, riding in Richmond Park. Eventually in 1938, on meeting my mother Edeline, falling in love & marrying her, that Australia became his new home. They spent their honeymoon in Megalong Valley in the Blue Mountains & this was where his love of the Australian bush was born. He & my mother, & all my mother’s family, became a close & loving extended family, keeping in contact by airmail letters & parcels - this right through to his death - & is continued today by myself with my cousin & her family in England, & with his half sister now living in Queensland.

In 1941 he joined the army but was discovered to have a ‘spot on the lung’ - the beginning of TB - & so was discharged & advised to get a job in the country. Thankfully all the riding lessons in London paid off as he gained a job as a stockman with a Cattle Station on the Queensland border on the Macintyre River, with Bogabilla being the nearest town - somewhat different to Richmond Park! We had a small house, no electricity & no sewer, an Aboriginal camp nearby. Dad befriended the Aboriginal folk. They taught him to put a ‘set’ line from the river bank in to the river to catch the Murray Cod fish, this including the hundreds of ‘fruit bats’ inhabiting the Peppercorn Trees & infestations of Fleas - a long way from dear old ‘Blighty’! 1943 saw a move to a sheep station in Young, southern NSW before eventually returning to Sydney in 1944, where he managed to get a job at the ‘Pecks Paste’ factory & where he became interested in socialism & even attended some Communist Party meetings, this latter wearing off after hearing of Baba & his teachings.

1946 with his ‘Hotelier’ qualifications & Merchant Navy experience behind him, he was then employed by the ‘Hotel Australia’, (Australia Hotel) then, the most prestigious & foremost Hotel in Australia. He worked his way through each section of the hotel when in 1948 he was chosen to personally care for the famous English actor Lawrence Olivier - later to be knighted to ‘Sir’ - & his then wife Vivienne Leigh, high praise indeed! His career continued upward to Personnel Manager when he met Sylvia his second wife, to becoming Manager of the whole hotel in the early 1960’s. He retired from the hotel in 1966 & then completed a Technical College course in Rural Studies in Agriculture & Horticulture where he was awarded First Prize on completion. He then spent twelve months getting practical experience working for a large Poultry Company before leaving to work for Baba in the leather goods shop in Edgecliff  ( suburb of Sydney ) thence on to Avatar’s Abode where the rest of his life is so ably & lovingly documented.

Courtesy of Michael Le Page video page on YouTube

Reg Paffle - 1971 - The Oral History Archive Project

                              - Courtesy of Los Angeles Meher Baba Center

Reg Paffle's youngest daughter Helen Forbes remembers her father.  Video courtesy of Michael Le Page.

Reg Paffle remembered ~ Ray Kerkhove

Video produced by Michael Le Page