New Year 2025 Honours: Retired Navy leader Rear Admiral David Proctor made ONZM

Commander David Proctor, of the RNZ Navy, at the Anzac Day dawn service in Napier in 2016. Photo / Warren Buckland

A retired head of the Royal New Zealand Navy who grew up in Napier suburb Maraenui has been made an officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit (ONZM) in the New Year Honours.

Retired Rear Admiral David Proctor, who grew up in Napier and became Chief of the Navy, has been made an officer of the Order of New Zealand in the New Year Honours. He was pictured representing the Navy as Commander David Proctor at an Anzac Day service in Napier in 2016. Photo / NZME

Rear Admiral David Proctor, who now lives in Kingston in the Australian Capital Territory, was head boy at Colenso High School in 1986. He had been a pupil at Richmond School and Wycliffe Intermediate, which merged with the high school to establish William Colenso College on the high school site in 2004.

Having grown up in Maraenui - Masefield Ave - Proctor said it seemed “weird” to be asked to accept such honour.

However, he said “there is a degree of role modelling in this”, showing that no matter where anyone was from, they could still achieve and rise to such positions as head of the Navy, and there were “options”.

Proctor has visited Hawke’s Bay regularly over the years despite a naval career that took him around the world. He was most recently in Napier in 2016 to address the Anzac Day service at the Soundshell, twice in 2019 for the Art Deco Festival and to speak at the college (taking two other naval staff as fellow role models)and in 2020 on the Fallen Comrades Memorial motorbike ride.

His father, who still lives in Hawke’s Bay, was a diver and they were often out in a boat on the bay. As a youngster, he sailed P-class yachts at the Napier Sailing Club.

Joining the Navy straight out of school in 1968, aged 18, Proctor took on logistical and supply roles. He rose through the ranks to become United Nations Chief of Logistics at the UN mission at East Timor. He became Chief of Navy in November 2018, the first officer with a logistics background, the position having typically been held by warfare officers.

He retired by rotation in June, becoming deputy executive director at the Australian Civil Military Centre in New South Wales.

Proctor said ahead of one visit “home”: “I’m proud to be a boy from the Bay, and it’s always nice to get back home two or three times a year.”

He is the second former pupil of Richmond School in a New Year Honours list in the past three years, following the Knighting of former director general of health Sir Ashley Bloomfield at the end of 2023, recognising his service during the Covid-19 pandemic.