A MEMORIAL service is to be held for a former miner who went on to lead a colourful life around the world.

Robert Mawson started work in a County Durham coal mine at 15, went on to become nuclear weapons specialist in the British Artillery and taught meditation as a Buddhist monk in Thailand.

Mr Mawson, who is originally from Leadgate, has died in New York, aged 71 and service is being held later this month.

Family and friends will gather to remember his life at St Ive’s Church in Leadgate on December 21 at 9am.

His sister Sandra Stokoe, 66, said: “He was a good talker and had travelled all over the world. He used to love to tell us anecdotes of his life.”

Mr Mawson was stationed in Menden, Germany with the British Army from 1961 to 1968, during the Cold War.

At the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, he was prepared to launch a nuclear weapon as soon as word was received from President John F Kennedy, a call that never came.

He returned to England as a Regimental Sergeant Major and taught cadets at the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst, before leaving the army to start a career as a salesman.

He travelled widely in Northern Europe, lived with the Inuit in Greenland and spent time Iran, Iraq, Hong Kong and Southeast Asia.

One of his favorite spots was Thailand, where he set up a marketing team for the British firm.

In 1983 he came to New York to sell a systems contract for his company to the United Nations.

His wife, Marcia, was reassigned to the UN regional commission for Asia and the Pacific in Bangkok in 1990, so the family relocated to Thailand.

In 1998, he became the first western lay person authorized to teach an advanced form of meditation, known in the Buddhist world as Dhammak?ya.

Three years later he was ordained as a Buddhist monk and instructed many people in meditation while wearing the sacred saffron robes.

Since then, he has been an instructor all over the world, and taught tens of thousands of people how to meditate.

His travels took him through a number of countries, including Italy, Singapore, Australia and New Zealand.

Following a number of operations and cardiac arrests, Mr Mawson received a heart transplant in 2003, but died in an American hospital last week.

He is survived by his two sisters, Joan Winter and Sandra Stokoe, and his brother Matthew, who still live in County Durham, his wife Marcia Brewster and two sons Matthew and Marshall, both 28; his daughter Katia Kankelborg Mawson; his son Stefan Heuermann; and his son Ruediger Morena.

He also has seven grandsons and innumerable nieces, nephews, grand nieces and grand nephews.

Mrs Stokoe said: “We have a lot of happy memories of him and that is what keeps us going.”