Lawyer, friend to Ngati Whatua and supporter of Catholic education. Died in Auckland, aged 77.
As an Auckland solicitor from 1953, Desmond Milgrew Piggin served diverse community groups, none more than the Ngati Whatua of Orakei.
He was educated at Papatoetoe Primary School and Sacred Heart College, Ponsonby, and went on to study law.
After qualifying as a solicitor in 1948 he travelled overseas, spending a year as skipper of a yacht supplying mission stations in the Solomon Islands.
In 1960, through friends he made at the Maori Affairs Department, he began a long association with the then depressed and dispirited Ngati Whatua at Orakei, who had suffered the loss of their traditional marae.
He became honorary solicitor to the Orakei Marae Reserve Trust Board and promoted the building of the new marae meeting house as well as the ecumenical chapel at the historic site at Okahu Bay.
He was honoured to be made a kaumatua of Orakei.
A Catholic, he gave many years of service to Catholic education and education generally through the PTA movement, and became one of the leaders in the campaign for state aid to Catholic schools, which negotiated grants from the government to Catholic bishops towards teachers' salaries.
In 1979 he entered practice as a barrister, undertaking court work at all levels.
He died after a long illness and is survived by his wife, Rita, and their five children.
<i>Obituary:</i> Desmond Piggin
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