Family History 1.125

Gaze History: NSG Memoir

War continued

Tragedy again struck the family when Noel’s second cousin, Leone and Ernest Eady’s son Vivian, who had joined the RNZAF as a navigator, was posted to the Solomon Islands war zone and was lost in action while crewing a Kittyhawk.  He was reported missing and was never found. 

Relations with the Eady family were not good at this stage.  Previously Ernest had been a client of Noel’s and in difficult days during the thirties had paid for his services by giving him a radio, and then an 8 mm movie camera and projector from the Eady family store. Leone and Ernest were regular attenders at the Tabernacle.  In the middle of the war years a struggle broke out in the membership of the Tabernacle over the direction the minister, Dr Alexander Hodge, was taking the church.  At one general meeting, a list was read of the members who the minister wished to expel from the church.  It made no mention of Fred Gaze, who was the secretary of the church. He rose to his feet and announced that he would be delighted to be considered as good a Christian as those who had been named, and so joined the list of excommunicated members. 

This cast a pall of despair over the family.  The house at Bellevue Road became like a tomb because of the grief.  Fred and Julia never returned to the Tabernacle; in fact they rarely went to church at all.  Doris transferred all her support to Shackleton Road.  But most difficult for them was the fact that Ernest Eady, Julia’s niece’s husband, was appointed church secretary in Fred’s place. The Eadys and the Gazes had little contact after that time.

 

Standing: Doris Kathleen
Seated: Felicia Mary and Stuart Goodwin, Frederick William, Julia, Olwyn Anne
and Noel Shaftesbury.
Kneeling: Christopher Franklin

Fred and Julia devoted themselves to their garden, their close family and friends, and to various charitable activities.  Julia had for many years knitted up jerseys from all the leftovers of wool she could find.  These would be parcelled up and sent off to help the Mission to Lepers, of which she was a keen supporter.  She was also a member of the Board of the Manurewa Children's Home.

Julia was also an expert needleworker; she had since the birth of her grandchildren made many of their clothes, and she was always at work on a piece of tapestry work, one or two of which still survive. 

The house in Ruarangi Road was becoming crowded by now, and in the early part of 1942, Noel and Mary started looking for a roomier house.  They found it in Papatoetoe and shifted in the May school holidays. For a few months they saved their petrol coupons and drove across town back to Sandringham to church on Sundays, but that proved a laborious process and once Noel and Mary had resigned from their Sunday School responsibilities, they started going to the Baptist Church in Papatoetoe. 

Driving into town had provided the opportunity to visit the parents at the same time, but now it became necessary to make other arrangements. There was a good bus service to Papatoetoe even on Sundays, and Mary’s father was able to travel out there after Church for dinner with the family.  Fred and Julia had never replaced their car since 1939, because cars were in short supply during the war, but they now found a Vauxhall 14-6 and Doris drove them out from time to time.  

Noel would save his one gallon of petrol and once a month the family would go for an outing on a Saturday, calculating the consumption to make the most of their day out. Travelling around Papatoetoe was by foot or bicycle; Noel in early days biked to the station and went to work on the train.  In later times he went by bus and later still, after the war, by car.