Family History 2.49

Bigelow Story

William's Family

 

I remember Jack as a gentle man, and a good teacher.

 

We did not have a lot to do with him or his family as I was growing up, because they lived a long way away, for most of the time teaching in Whakatane.

 

Previously, they had lived at Lepperton, near New Plymouth. When I met Margaret's parents for the first time, I discovered that Ruby had grown up in Lepperton and attended the school there. As we talked we discovered that Jack had been Ruby's teacher.

 

Not only that, but Ruby and her younger sister Betty had been friends and playmates of Jack's daughters, Margaret (later Cowie) and Beth (later Struther). Margaret and Beth's mother, our Auntie Josie, had grown up in Paeroa and Jack had met her while teaching there.

 

During the early twenties, while Jack was working as a pupil-teacher in New Plymouth, the Labour Party was being established in the more remote parts of the country, and the activist in Taranaki was Walter Nash, later Finance Minister and Prime Minister in successive Labour governments. Walter wanted Jack to enter politics more fully, but Jack declined.

 

After Whakatane, Jack was appointed Head of Ruawai District High School in Northland. At the end of my last year at Auckland Grammar he invited me to spend the study week before the Scholarship Exams with them, away from the busyness of Auckland (and the temptations to neglect my swat I guess). So I had a happy week in Ruawai studying during the daytime while Jack and Josie were working at school, and then being shown around their part of the world in the late afternoons.

 

Several of our Dreadon and Bigelow relatives had had farms in that part of the country, so it was interesting to be introduced to some connexions I didn't already know about.

 

Jack finished his working life as Head of Whangarei Primary School, and retired in Whangarei, where I visited them several times. 

 

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Mary, of course, became my mother, so we know her a lot better. She needs several posts to herself!

 

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Win was also an unknown quantity in my early childhood. I have written about the family holiday in Ashburton during the war just before Barbara was born; apart from that we knew about the Bird family, but had little contact with them.

 

Until Uncle Doug died of a heart attack. There was no widow's benefit in those days, and Win had four children to care for: Don and Derry, whose mother had been Doug's first wife, and Jenny, who was the daughter of his second wife. And Barbara, who was a babe in arms virtually.

 

With help from my parents, Win moved back home to Auckland and settled in Mt Albert. We spent lots of holidays with our new-found cousins and got to know them much better while growing from 10 to 20 years of age. Eventually I was honoured to be Don's Best Man when he married Fran.

 

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Meantime, William had developed arthritis in one knee. In those days there were no joint replacement procedures; the only treatment was to fuse the bones. William had the operation and came to stay with us at Mt Albert while he recuperated.

 

I remember watching him pricking out little seedlings to put in the garden while he was with us. He misjudged how much he could cope with standing up, because he suddenly said "Crikey Crowbars!" and fell flat on his back with a resounding "Crack!" I ran to Mum, who came rushing out and helped Grandad back on to a chair. He always walked with a limp from then on; he had used a walking-stick for some years before his operation.

 

He grew old gracefully, often visiting us for Sunday dinner after church. He would come by bus to Papatoetoe and chat happily to Dad, holding forth about the sins of the First Labour Government (this was during the last years of World War II).

 

Eventually he died in 1951, when I was seventeen, and I can still vaguely remember his funeral, packed to the rafters, with people standing out side the little church as well, at Shackleton Road.