HE WAS remembered by his commanding officer as a man who, despite the fast tempo of his life, was famous for stopping to smell the coffee.
Now Mandurah’s Lance Corporal Mervyn McDonald, a special operations commando who lost his life fighting in Afghanistan in 2012, has been honoured by his mother and step-father who have dedicated to his memory the café he dreamt of starting.
Mervyn’s Café, which was opened in Dolphin Quay by Myrna and Bernie Walker in November, was exactly the kind of place Mr McDonald dreamt of running when he finished his deployment in Afghanistan.
“It was something Mervyn wanted to do; every time he used to come home after a deployment we used to talk about how we’d go into business together and he said he would like to start a café and he said, ‘Mum you have to make a beautiful coffee’,” Mrs Walker said.
“‘And it has to be near the water.’”
But Mr McDonald never had the chance to fulfil his dream.
He was killed when the helicopter carrying him to an early morning raid against a Taliban stronghold crashed in Helmand Province.
He was on his last overseas deployment after more than 15 years of military service.
The café became his parents’ way of building him a memorial that would be full of life, rather than the cold monuments usually reserved for fallen soldiers.
“It helps me to keep him alive,” Mrs Walker said.
“If I have anything that would be associated with him, then this way every moment of the day I see Mervyn’s Café and think of him.
“I want to keep his memory up.
“When I told my other son, he said, ‘Mum you’re keeping him up, he’ll be happy with that.’”
The café was also a way to let the Mandurah community know about their son.
Bernie Walker said: “Mandurah was his home, he loves Mandurah, he had a property here he was going to come back to, and spend the rest of his life here.
“We want the people of Mandurah to know he’s from here, where he came from and what he loved in Mandurah."
