I’m really sorry that circumstances have prevented Heather and I from being with you.
 
Esler was three years my senior but I called him Junior because my father was also called Esler. We competed nonstop against one another, no holds barred, whether it was playing cards, milking cows by hand, riding bikes, navigating or taking photos. He invariably won. I looked up to him and was proud of him all my life because he was so special. “I am Esler Crawford’s brother” I would often tell people when I met them for the first time.
 
He was a gifted motorsport photographer, arguably one of the best in the world. Paddy Hopkirk  commented on hearing of his death “He came to Le Mans with me in the mid-sixties and taught the official photographers there how to take pictures.”
 
He was a brilliant navigator until car sickness intervened. You could always tell that he had had a bad night by looking at the telltale streaks on his side of the car and yet he still successful on numerous occasions. He won the 1963 Circuit of Ireland with Ian Woodside and was twice champion Northern Ireland Rally Navigator.
 
But I admired him most because he was a straight talker. No political BS. You always knew where you stood with him. He didn’t suffer fools gladly. 
 
He was an innovator and built a 5 star Hilton tree house on our farm in Larne. Not so successful was the wooden “sidecar” he attached to a bicycle. I was inveigled into being the passenger but it didn’t last too long since the back wheel collapsed due to the side G forces, on a fast (10mph) downhill sweeper. Unfortunately when Pierre Lallement invented the bicycle in France, he failed to anticipate that my big brother would attach a wooden sidecar and try to race it.
 
He was his own man and a risk taker, starting his own highly successful photographic business when it would have been so easy to coast the rest of his life as a research chemist. He had astute foresight and made sure he was ahead of the curve by having the most up to date and best photographic equipment.
 
I didn’t always agree with his political views. He was even more right wing than I am but at least I knew what he stood for. 
 
He never complained, not even when he suffered from colon cancer and its complications which eventually took his life. He was immensely lucky to meet Mary who stood by him and lovingly cared for him throughout the most trying of times.
 
Our sincere condolences to Mary, Caroline, Jane and David
 
Rest in peace Esler. You were a brilliant human being and a great brother.