ALAN ROOT – REST IN PEACE AS YOUR LEGACY LIVES ON
(Posted 27th August 2017)
Alan Root, an icon amongst his film making and photographing peers, passed on yesterday aged 80.
For me it has been ages since I last met Alan and longer still when I was first introduced to him at a function in Nairobi not long after I arrived in Kenya.
When he learned that I had moved to Kenya from Germany he narrated how he was taken under the wings of the late Prof. Dr. Bernard Grzimek and thrown into the filming deep end after Michael Grzimek had died in a light aircraft crash in the Serengeti. Aged just 21 at the time did his work for Grzimek’s German TV series ‘Serengeti Must Not Die‘ lay the foundation for his own films, among them notably ‘The Year of the Wildebeest‘ which continues to fascinate me to this day.
Another meeting took place at Keekorok Lodge where he was test flying hot air balloons, in the presence of one of the Block brothers, who – owning and operating the lodge through Block Hotels – then promptly launched Balloon Safaris, the first such venture in Kenya.
The rest were chance meetings like one at the Nairobi Museum ahead of a function but every time we met he managed to recall my name, probably as a result of our first conversation about his work for my late German compatriot Bernard Grzimek.
Alan was no longer married when his first wife and co-author of many of his early successes, was murdered in Kenya in 2006 and I sent my condolences, duly acknowledged a few weeks later.
Alan by then had remarried twice and lived a life away from the public eye and the attention he enjoyed in his heydays but it will never be forgotten how he inspired the next generation of wildlife photographers and filmmakers and even David Attenborough paid tribute to Alan when he credited him early on in his budding career as the one who gave wildlife films a new direction and popularized them to a much wider public.
Alan is survived by his widow Fran and their two sons Myles and Rory to whom first and foremost my heartfelt condolences go.
Rest in Peace Alan Root – we who remember you and are still here for a while longer will make sure your legacy lives on.
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