KAPAI'S CORNER: Sense of the father not visited upon this son

THERE are many moments that have stayed with me from my schoolyard days, as there are many teachers who gave me words of wisdom that I still carry in my kete of knowledge today.
One of those memorable teachers with wise words was Ron Bryers, my headmaster at Omanu School.
To a 5-year-old just starting school,  Mr Bryers was a giant of a man. He had huge hands the size of softball gloves and when he wanted your attention he got it by banging those huge hands down on a desk.
In fact it's legendary among Omanu locals that  he did that one day and actually broke the desk in half.
When he moved to Tauranga from Taumarunui, Ronald Frederick Bryers had already worn the silver fern for his country as an All Black and Maori All Black lock.
This tall timber of a man was larger than life with a huge smile to match when he arrived in Mount Maunganui, and very quickly he nurtured a nest for his wonderful wife Betty and their family of four kids.
The Bryers family lived right next to Omanu School so we got to see a lot of them in and out of school as we lived just around the corner on Macville Rd, the same road as the RSA where Dad and Ron would have a quiet beer and a game of snooker.
I remember being called to Ron's office once and once only - that was enough.
I had been playing kingaseeni or bullrush as they call it now  and accidently clocked Pearl Walsh fair smack in the moosh with a coat hanger. 
Poor little Pearl had plenty of boohoo juice pouring down her face and a good amount of claret coming from her nose by the time she hit the deck, and soon after I was summoned to big Ron's office.
Thinking I was going to wear the thick end of Ron's giant leather strap I was shaking like a Zumba instructor and barely able to breathe by the time I knocked on his office door.
And it didn't get any better when I walked in and saw the strap sitting ominously on his desk.
And that's where Headmaster Bryers showed the true content of his character and left me with a lesson in leniency and fairness that I carry with me to this day.
He offered me a seat.  And in a soft fatherly voice he talked to me about how we should look after each other at school.
He lifted his huge hand and placed it on my head as a dad would do to his favourite son and told me there was never an excuse to purposefully hurt another human being, not even on the footy field.
And when you make a mistake by hurting some one you front up like a man and go and apologise to the person who you have hurt.
Then he shook my hand with his huge softball sized mitt and I walked out making a beeline for Pearl to apologise and vowing to never ever hit another human being again.
I am not going to go down the pathway of Bryers-bashing as it has been covered by other columnists in other newspapers.
There is nothing any of the other Bryers family members could have done to turn their son and brother around and try to tame his ego.
He was hell bent on becoming a billionaire - come hell or high water. And it looks like they both arrived on his doorstep at the same time, as they have for the shareholders of Blue Chip who are left holding a portfolio that couldn't buy a newspaper let alone a feed of fish 'n chips wrapped in one.
This column is about honouring a good man who knew right from wrong, not about a son who couldn't see past his own ego.
What makes a man like Ron's son travel down such a crooked path is hard to understand.
Did he feel like he had to fill the huge shoes his father left behind or was he obsessed with becoming the first Maori billionaire?
Whatever it was, he hasn't done what his father would have asked of him and that is to front up like a man and apologise for his mistakes.
And until he does this he will never be seen as a chip off the old block.
broblack@xtra.co.nz