At the age of 95, it was no surprise that Sir Owen Woodhouse was unable to travel from his home in Auckland to the funeral in Hastings of Sir Rodney Gallen yesterday.
So, in answer to an approach from Hawke's Bay Today, Sir Owen has produced his own tribute to a man with whom he had a lot in common.
They were both judges who rose to the Court of Appeal (Sir Owen in New Zealand and Sir Rodney in Fiji), and were both knighted. They were both former pupils of Napier Boys' High School, and former partners in the law firm now known as Willis Toomey Robinson.
Sir Owen said from Auckland he first met Sir Rodney in 1958, when, as a young aspiring lawyer, Rodney Gallen returned to Napier after graduating in law from Victoria University and working his first years in the profession in Wellington.
"He soon became a great help to all of us," Sir Owen said. "From the outset he showed that he had an unusually mature grasp of a problem.