A GOLFER who consistently proved age is no barrier, former Gore mayor Ivan Elder QSO, died at Southland Hospital on February 23.
He was 99.
Ivan was a regular at the Gisborne East Coast Veteran Golfers’ Society’s tournament held annually on the Poverty Bay course.
Competing at the GEC open,however, was secondary to visiting son Ron Elder and his family in Gisborne.
Throughout his participation, Ivan was the oldest player in the tournament, including 2008 when The Herald ran a front page story on Ivan (90) as the oldest and local man Ron Young (55) the youngest.
He also featured on the back page three years later alongside six-year-old rising star Zach Rolls.
World War 2 air force pilot Ivan got into golf in the 60s. Among his achievements over the ensuing decades were four holes in one and breaking his age several times.
An accountant in his working years, he was mayor of Gore from 1972 to 1980 after seven years as a councillor and was believed to be the oldest active Rotarian in Australasia up to his death.
