Time to wind down

LOOKING FORWARD: Bill Thorpe will have more time to spend with family and friends after many years of commitment to work, and Rotary. Picture by Rebecca Grunwell

The Poverty Bay Club didn’t want him, but Rotary did. John Gillies talked to Bill Thorpe about his long involvement with the service organisation, alongside his working life — first with family business Columbine before moving to horticulture.

Bill Thorpe can’t be sure, but he suspects the reason the Poverty Bay Club turned him down for membership was his listed occupation — “textile knitter”.

“It was the mid-60s and I hadn’t been back long from my accountancy studies at university,” Bill said.

“I spent a year at Graham and Dobson and then moved into the family business, Columbine Hosiery. Dad (Jack Thorpe) had the philosophy that I should go through all the departments. I spent two years on shift work, having persuaded Margie (wife-to-be Margaret Thomson) to come up to Gisborne.

“One of my mates from Graham and Dobson proposed me for the Poverty Bay Club. I put on the application form that I was a textile knitter, and I was turned down . . . I didn’t see why.”

He had better luck when John Logan, a founder member of the Rotary Club of Gisborne West, put him forward for Rotary membership in 1972.

Rotary had a classification system to ensure clubs represented a cross-section of a community’s business and professional service. Bill’s classification was “textile manufacturing”.

Bill was inducted into Rotary in January 1973 and found he enjoyed the company.

“It was a relatively social club in those days,” he said.

“I particularly enjoyed Gisborne West because it was made up of practical, down-to-earth people. A lot of them were tradesmen.

“It gave me an opportunity to meet with people I wouldn’t otherwise have socialised with. We had a lot of young joiners, carpenters and builders.”

Now, 46 years after he joined, Bill has retired from active Rotary membership but his fellow Rotarians weren’t about to let him leave quietly.

They named him a Paul Harris Fellow in recognition of his contribution to Rotary and the community.

This award from the Rotary Foundation recognises a person’s tangible support for its ideals of international peace and goodwill, and is named after the founder of Rotary International.

In Rotary, it’s a big deal.

But is Rotary a big deal any more? Clubs around the world face falling membership, and recruitment is a challenge.

“I think there is a change in the attitudes towards family life, a feeling that bringing up a family is a husband-and-wife activity,” Bill said.

“Particularly, evening meetings are a real challenge for parents. I think it is people not being prepared to commit time.

“I have always found the bureaucracy of Rotary not to my liking . . . things like attendance requirements, classifications.”

Balanced against that were the things he enjoyed: “The camaraderie and the fellowship; the opportunity to socialise.”

What he particularly enjoyed about the meetings was the diversity of guest speakers — “hearing things you wouldn’t hear otherwise, from people you don’t know”.

When members of the Rotary clubs of Gisborne and Gisborne West decided to join forces and relaunch under the name Rotary Club of Gisborne in July 2016, some longer-standing members decided it was a tidy departure point. Bill stayed on and continued to play a leading role in the logistics of the Five-Buck-a-Duck Race to raise funds for the Life Education Trust, and played a full role in other club activities. Now 77, he’s winding down work and voluntary activities, and looking forward to spending more time with family and friends, at home or away. He and Margaret have three adult children — Mandy, Melissa and Guy — and four grandchildren.

“Pleasingly, after many years living in the UK, all of them have returned to live in New Zealand,” Bill said.

Rotarians weren't about to let him leave quietlyRotary highlights had included the Allan Brown-led relocation of the Star of Canada for it to become a maritime museum, the installation of the gazebo on the riverbank at the confluence of the rivers, and the duck race. He was Rotary community service director, and enjoyed the service component of the organisation.

“We raised $125,000 for the Star of Canada project — a massive effort for a small club,” Bill said.

The Five-Buck-a-Duck Race followed a formula that had worked elsewhere. The club hired the original plastic ducks, but now the new club has its own.

As a keen sailor in both leisure and competition, Bill had access to boats and equipment that made the race possible, and was responsible for running the on-water side of things.

Off the water, local primary schools helped with the sale of tickets on a commission basis. For the first race, they sold tickets for every one of the 5000 plastic ducks.

“We put them into a huge cargo net and with a Robbie Taylor crane launched them into the Taruheru River.”

They timed the event to coincide with an outgoing tide, so the ducks would “race” from the Peel Street Bridge to the finish line near the boat ramp. Their most significant challenge in this regard came after an earthquake in Chile, when the tide that was supposed to be on its way out came in “at some velocity” and carried the ducks upriver until the surge eased and something approaching normal flow resumed. For the greater part of five decades, Bill’s Rotary activities — following the mottoes of “service above self” and “one profits most who serves best” — have served as a philanthropic counterpoint to his business activities.

His father Jack was one of three brothers who ran Columbine Hosiery. Jack was production director, George ran sales and Alan was the accountant.

Bill was a boarder at Scots College in Wellington and the prospect of coming home to work “didn’t appeal”.

“I decided a commerce degree was a great way to not have to start work. At school I had been OK at accounting and a teacher persuaded me to do the first three papers for university while I was in seventh form. I did evening classes and passed them.”

With that head start, he gained an accountancy degree in two years of full-time study at university. For a year he worked with BP and did a management training course.

Then came his year with Graham and Dobson, two years of nightshift work at Columbine, marriage to Margaret in 1966 and, in the same year, travel to Britain for a Leicester University post-graduate course in textile engineering. After 18 months in England and six months in the United States, where Bill worked with textile companies, the couple returned to Gisborne.

Bill started back at Columbine as quality manager, then became production manager. When his father retired in 1972, Bill became production director, a position he held until late 1982.

“I had just turned 40 and decided it was time for a lifestyle change,” Bill said.

In so-called retirement, his father had developed four “quite large” orchards and for a year Bill had been doing accountancy work connected with them by night and textile manufacturing by day.

Bill started his own horticulture consultancy business. Margaret was apprehensive about the shift from a secure senior position at Columbine to a business with no guaranteed income, but Bill was excited.

“At that time I was being approached by business associates and friends about investing in horticulture, so on behalf of others I set up about 10 orchards growing kiwifruit, citrus and persimmons. Around 1984/85 I supervised the build of three coolstores for the kiwifruit industry. In 1984 we built what is now New Zealand Fruits off Lytton Road backing on to Scott Street, and in 1988 I set up the fruit marketing company First Fresh.”

In the early ’90s the kiwifruit industry experienced “significant shrinkage” and a lot of orchards were pulled out.

“We survived because we were diversified in crops,” Bill said.

“Kiwifruit have since come right, highlighted by the introduction of the new Sungold variety.

“Gisborne also grows about 70 percent of New Zealand’s crop of persimmons, with New Zealand Fruits packing and First

Fresh marketing the total Gisborne volume. My brother Rick and I produce about half of that 70 percent. Rick now grows more persimmons than anyone else in New Zealand.

“In the 2000s we just grew the business. New Zealand Fruits has been extended five times during my tenure. It’s a company that employs 300 people full-time for about eight months of the year, and 75 or 80 people full-time for the whole year.”

Bill’s calculated gamble on a change of career received the ultimate vindication when he was awarded the Bledisloe Cup at the Horticulture New Zealand annual conference in Hamilton last month. The cup is presented in recognition of outstanding and meritorious contribution to the horticulture industry.

For most of his working life, Bill has relaxed through sport. He was a competitive sailor, attending numerous national and North Island championships, and an A Grade squash player.