Big Dee, Derin Greenslade has sadly passed away on November 10 after a short illness.

Gregarious, resilient, and a battler to the end, he is leaving a huge gap in the hearts and lives of his family and friends.

'Derin taught me more as a son than I ever taught him as a father,” says Derin's father Ben Greenslade. 'In terms of humility, compassion, loyalty - those important human things that everybody should have had - he had them in spades.”

Aged 54, Derin had been unwell over the last two months, having contracted a bacterial infection which affected his heart valves.

Despite surgery at Waikato Hospital on Thursday, he was unable to recover and passed away on Sunday surrounded by his close and loving family.

Derin was born in Otaki on February 21, 1965, to Ben and the late Dawn Greenslade who died ten years ago.

Derin's family, which included brother Andy and sister Linda, established their family home in Grange Road, Tauranga.

Derin attended Otumoetai College, which had a strong reputation for music and drama due to teachers like Bob Addison and Pat Cook, and Derin quickly became involved in music, singing and drama, joining the college choir.

Fellow students Greg Bold (guitar), Roger Bullot (bass), Malcolm Welsford (drums) and Karl Frost (keyboards) had formed the band Catch 22 and invited Derin to sing with them. This was the beginning of his years of singing in bands.

'We were only kids playing pubs and doing that sort of thing, doing the racecourse,” Derin recalled recently while chatting about the band.

Catch 22 rehearsed on occasion in the Greenslade family's basement.

'It was a joke in our household,” says Derin's father, Ben Greenslade. 'The kids were home and so was their music! Catch 22!”

Derin went on to perform with the band Ten17, again made up of local musicians. Shortly after that he attended university, then joined Auckland band Zigzag, which included Graeme Hardaker. After Zigzag came Corporate Fraud which played for corporate events in Auckland.

His musical experience became more diverse and eclectic with diving into jazz, opera and corporate work. He was sometimes performing six nights in a row, so went to a vocal tutor in Auckland to work on his technique.

The tutor recognised that Derin had quite a large vocal range hitting a top C and suggested he may want to do some opera performances which he also did.

He has performed in a band called Music Corporation with one of the Chicks singers, Suzanne Lynch. He also performed with Ray Columbus; Billy Christian, a bass player who was in Ray Columbus's Invaders; Steve Larkin who now has a Freddy Mercury tribute show on cruise ships; and with Mike Walker, a keyboard player. It was a lot of jazz, corporate events and different styles, which he loved.

In the 90s, Derin returned to Tauranga and joined China Zoo, a band with Graeme, and also Mike Kirk, Pat Hura, Kevin Shilling and Neil Pepper.

Derin finished performing about 2003 when he'd decided he'd had enough. He'd been doing gigs since about age 15.

Since then he's still kept a hand in music, singing with Scott Braid, a vocal tutor. For the 50^th Otumoetai College reunion, he was part of a band for the night, much to the enjoyment of those who attended.

During the 2000s, he took a new direction, becoming more involved with furniture. Derin and his brother Andy started Greenslades Furniture in the 80s, now owned by Andy and his family. Derin and his partner Lindy moved on to grow the Furniture Zone business which has 26 stores in total with four of them across the Bay of Plenty – in Bethlehem, Tauranga Central, Owens Place and Papamoa.

Furniture has been a part of Derin's life for the last thirty years and has provided opportunity to travel and achieve some dreams.

A big passion has been motor racing which Derin has been involved with since the early 2000s.

He and Andy used to tear up and down the Ohope Beach in a go-kart when Ben was the principal of Ohope Beach Primary. Later when they started to achieve success in their furniture business, they both decided to give motor racing a crack. In the early 2000s, Derin bought a Mark 1 Cortina 2-door coupe and had a local guy build it into a race car. That was the start. Andy's been NZ champion a few times, with Derin fully enjoying the racing experience.

In September 2009, at the South Island Endurance Series at Teretonga Park near Invercargill, Derin had the misfortune of crashing, resulting in part of his leg needing to be amputated. He also had both arms smashed.

His lower limb amputation didn't slow him down. Derin felt at the time that it would either drive him downwards, or he could take the attitude that you're only here once. He decided to take the second approach to life.

The car accident happened two months after Dawn, Derin's mother, died.

'He hadn't really had enough time to grieve for his mum,” says Ben. 'But he got through that. He was resilient because he was determined and he's also a person who looked at the big picture. For him the only one way is up.”

Derin got into everything he could, continued racing, and ended up climbing more hills and cycling more distances than he ever did with two legs. He also found he developed more patience and tolerance as a result of his lower limb amputation.

One of the things he said that he realised was there was nothing he couldn't do, it was just a matter of adapting what he could do and getting on with the job of doing it.

Before his amputation he'd climbed Mauao once. Following the amputation, he strode up the mountain on his prosthetic leg more than 20 times. He decided to climb it as often as he could. This attitude about giving life a good crack was an inspiration to many.

Dee felt that the experience of the injury, amputation, and spending time in a wheelchair taught him humility, understanding, compassion and empathy.

In 2011, five containers of furniture that Derin was importing into the country from Asia, China and Vietnam met an unfortunate fate aboard the Rena which ran aground on October 5.

For some time he didn't know whether his containers were on board the ship or in the waters around the Bay of Plenty.

This concern about a commercial loss of furniture was quickly overtaken by his greater concern about the impact on the coastline.

'At the end of the day you are talking about material goods. Oil seeping into the sea has a much bigger implication for our region. Once we realised the implication of the oil, it became far greater importance than the state of the containers.”

He met soulmate Lindy Dwyer three and a half years ago, and together they are grandparents to Ollie, Archer, Conner and Savannah.

'From that moment we met, he said to me ‘if we're doing this together, we're doing everything together', and we have, we've done everything together,” says Lindy.

They've toured Europe, have been to an iconic race track in Belguim and visited Flanders Field. Dee said of that experience 'Anyone who wanted to see what sacrifice our forefathers did for us – they need to go there”.

He enjoyed a lot of travel saying that losing a leg didn't stop any of that. Climbing and cycling high mountains in Canada and the USA were all part of the challenges he took on.

In September Derin said it had been a privilege to perform with some of the greatest musicians and singers in NZ. He felt that in Tauranga there were some of the best players and musicians that he's ever worked with, including Graeme Hardaker who he said had one of the best rock voices he'd ever heard.

He reflected that he'd 'worked with great people, had great laughs, done great shows and enjoyed the ride”.

A great joy in his life recently has been the arrival of Ollie to his son Adam and partner Kerry.

Derin's farewell will be held at the Bethlehem Baptist Church, 90 Bethlehem Road, Tauranga, on Friday, November 15, at 1pm.