Odd Aune

Odd Aune was born on 25 May 1942 in Bindal, on the Norwegian coast, into a devout Lutheran farming family. His father built fishing boats, and Odd grew up surrounded by forest, fjord, and the rhythms of craftsmanship. As a boy he rowed to a boarding school, climbed mountains his neighbours had not attempted, fished with his sisters, and built his own small boat in his father's workshop. From his mother he inherited a love of reading and study.

Restless for the wider world, he left home around the age of sixteen, served in the Norwegian Navy, and bicycled across parts of Europe, visiting military cemeteries along the way. After further service in northern Norway and work on a fishing boat, he settled in Oslo, studied law, qualified as a lawyer, and was recruited to the Ministry of Agriculture.

In May 1972, shortly before turning thirty and just after completing his bar exams, Odd was witnessed to by two sisters at a student dormitory and soon met the Norwegian church community. He grasped the Divine Principle quickly, drawing on a strong Christian background and on years of practising yoga and meditation. He moved into the centre, became an energetic witnesser, and brought in many of the brothers who would form the core of the early Norwegian church.

In 1975 he was sent to Great Britain as a team captain in the International One World Crusade, where colleagues remembered him as a gentle but strong leader. In 1978 he was blessed in marriage to Claire from France, and the couple were sent as national leaders to Sweden, where members spoke of a new wind in the providence. Responding later to a call to the United States, he was severely injured in a car accident there and used crutches for the rest of his life.

Settling in France with Claire, Odd raised three daughters and became a Cheonbo couple, receiving a calligraphy from True Mother shortly before his passing. In his last years he worked on an inventor's project aimed at offering free energy. Though physically diminished, he remained — in one friend's words — a man of quiet strength, faithful to Sunday service until the very day he fell and was taken to hospital.

'He was too stupid to be afraid,' a brother recalled, quoting Odd's own self-description of his early adventures.