Remembering Lale Metzinger, friend and colleague
by matt @ 2:00 pm. Blogged under Living and Dying
On Sunday afternoon Suzie_Q and I headed to Balham to have lunch with the husband of my former friend and colleague Lale Metzinger (nee Gurel); Lale sadly passed away in April of this year after suffering from a very aggressive form of cancer. I owe Lale a lot; she gave me my first big break into online marketing, as well as providing some PPC contracts for Firetop Ltd whilst she later worked at Greenpeace. Working with Lale was a major crash course in digital advertising - and it sent me on my current path. She was a very kind and generous person so I will always be grateful that I knew her. I’d never met with Peter Metzinger before, but was thoroughly glad he was able to find time for lunch with us whilst here on business.
Peter Metzinger is a Business Campaigner, having spent many years working with Greenpeace (strangely before he even met Lale). He now devotes his time to putting his skills to use in the corporate world, spending the recent weekend working in London, Dublin and soon Melbourne and Vietnam. In his early activist days Peter was involved in some of the first research into the vanishing Ozone layer, his own weather balloon helping to make history in a paper published in Nature. You can read about his business campaigning work in German (and sometime English) on his blog.
Of course whilst we were eating at the Blue Pumpkin (who at one point delivered me some food to eat and then took it away again - bizarre) we didn’t just talk about work. We talked about Lale too, her illness but more importantly what she stood for and the impact she had on all those she touched. There’s no doubt she’ll be sorely missed and the world is a worse off place without her, especially now that she’s not working her magic at Greenpeace. One thing we can do in Lale’s absence is continue to support her work with the Native American Indians in South Dakota - a memorial project to help incarcerated Lakota youth accepts donations in her name.
Technorati Tags: lale gurel, metzinger, greenpeace, business campaigning, blue pumpkin
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February 15th, 2007 at 11:59 pm
Dear Matt
Thanks so much for writing this. I found it only now. It was very inspiring to meet you two and I hope it won’t be long until the next time.
I am very touched by what you write. Yes, Lale was very special, very inspiring and very skilled. She used to admire me for my campaigning know-how but when I found out what she was doing I found it awesome and I admired her.
We buried the rest of her ashes near Melbourne on 7th January. That was the final farewell for me. She is missed very much indeed.
Take care, see you soon
ptr
November 2nd, 2007 at 11:27 am
I was a close childhood friend of Lale’s. It’s her birthday today (2/11) and thought I’d honour her with a search on her name to see what was out there, and found your site. I found a lot of comfort in your words - it brought a rush of memories of how it was to be inspired by Lale. Just wanted to let you know that.
Take care,
Danilo, London
November 2nd, 2007 at 11:34 am
Danilo,
Thanks for writing this. It’s a sad day.
PTR