Family History 1.131

Gaze History: NSG Memoir

Noel's story continued

He was still thinking about designing houses and was undecided whether to alter the house at Papatoetoe or to build a new house somewhere else. To augment his income he had for some years been marking assignments for students of the International Correspondence School.  Around this time he was persuaded by an early encyclopedia salesman to invest in a set of books which introduced students to the great books of the world.  Whether he ever got his money’s worth is doubtful, but those books were used by other members of the family for many a school assignment.

 

Mary’s sister Win was hit with a great tragedy at this stage.  Her husband Doug died suddenly. After struggling for a while, with no widow’s benefit in those days, she made the decision to come back to Auckland and found a house in Mt Albert for herself and her four children. Noel became the substitute man in the life of the Bird children and the families spent many holidays together.

Don Bird, the oldest of the children writes:

 

 

Noel Gaze was a prince among men – to at least one small boy growing up in suburban Auckland in the thirties and forties.     Learned, having graduated with a Masters’ Degree when few people had even a Bachelors’, he had both a faith and a commitment which commanded the respect of his contemporaries – whether in the law, in business, in the church, or in society at large.    Other than my own father, probably no man has had as great an impact on my life as Noel Gaze.

 

My first memory of the Gaze family was while they were living on the slopes of Mount Albert.     My step-mother was Noel’s sister-in-law, and my parents and siblings and I were staying for Christmas.     Some time later the Gaze family moved to Kolmar Road in Papatoetoe,  where my family were frequent visitors after we returned to Auckland in the forties.    To me as a young  teenager the section seemed huge. Even more note-worthy were the holidays we had at the Gaze family “bach” on the hillside at Milford within a short walk of the beach and “The Pirate Shippe”.    That was where I celebrated “VJ Day”  - the end of the war with Japan, and the end of the Second World War.    It was before the Harbour Bridge – it was in the days of ferry boats and big slow yellow buses.

 

It seemed completely appropriate that I should consult “Uncle Noel” about my choice of a career in 1947.     After all, he was a practising lawyer, and he had “done the exams” himself.    He had his own

office in the Security Building in Queen Street.      I knew there were certain types of “cases” which he as a Christian would not take.  

 

I had decided that I wanted to be a lawyer too, but I had started my secondary schooling in a town where “no-one” took Latin, it was deemed too late to start the subject when I enrolled at Mt Albert Grammar two terms later – and at that time Latin was a pre-requisite for a law degree     I had decided that I would just have to start from scratch and catch up four or five years’ Latin as quickly as I could.    I am most grateful now that “Uncle Noel” helped me to see the issues and  problems more clearly.       When I arrived in Dunedin I found one of my contemporaries from a legal family was trying to pass Latin for a law degree.     After six or eight repeats, which had badly frustrated him and his father’s plans for succession, he was finally allowed  to sit the remaining law subjects after the prescription for the law degree was changed and Latin was no longer a pre-requisite.

 

Perhaps his most valuable contributions to the Baptist Churches in New Zealand were the years he served as Chairman of the Board of the NZ Baptist Theological College and his year as President of the Baptist Union of NZ.     He commanded the respect of his colleagues, and he enjoyed a ready acceptance in all of the churches throughout the country.     A man of faith, vision, care and compassion he always had his feet on the ground.      It was not for nothing that his second name was Shaftesbury!