Family History 1.118

Gaze History: NSG Memoir 

 

 

 

Gladys Massam, widow of Henry,  Noel’s best man, remembers this period:

 

The Massams and the Gazes were in the Tabernacle and I guess the boys would be in Bible Class together.  I gather that the Shackleton Road Church began with a split from Grange Road, and Russell Grave, who was an old Tabernacle boy, was minister, and I gather that Doris and Noel went there.  I know that the Senior Gazes gave the land for the Shackleton Road Church

 

The Bigelows were members there and Noel fell in love with Mary and married in the church there.  Henry and Reg Barker were in the party.  Bible Class camps and BYMOA Club were very much part of this era.

 

When Noel and Mary built in Mt Albert they went to Sandringham Church and there we caught up with them again.  My Dad was the minister there and we left the Tabernacle and joined Sandringham when our first babe was born in 1935.

 

Noel, Reg and Henry met again and were all immersed in the work there, all of them being church officers.

 

Reg led the choir and Noel and Henry sang in it, and they were always the star turn at Church socials, for they had a real gift with skits, etc.

 

Henry shared Noel’s office while he began business on his own, and Doris was helping in Noel’s office. We moved to New Plymouth in 1938 and we lost close touch…

 

 

During the depression Noel and Mary did their best to help others even more needy than themselves.  Mary had had first-hand experience at the stock and station company of farmers who had had to walk off their farms because of the very low commodity prices and high mortgages. And both of them had relatives who were out of work. So the windows were regularly washed by itinerant window-washers, and the household tasks were assisted by a woman who came in for a few hours weekly. 

In those days the milk used to be delivered by a milkman with horse and cart, who would come round to the back of the house and pour a pint or two of fresh milk into a billy left in a special small cupboard by the back door. And the grocer at the Owairaka shops would send the groceries up with a boy on a bicycle which had a large wicker basket on the handlebars. All the loose items like flour and sugar were weighed out and put into brown paper bags.