Farewell to some notable people

Death cast a long shadow over arts and letters in 2004.

Acclaimed author Janet Frame, her biographer and eminent historian Michael King, and novelist Maurice Shadbolt were writers of the first rank.

Frame, tipped as a strong contender for the Nobel Prize for literature in 2003, was the most gifted New Zealand writer since Katherine Mansfield.

Her death at 79 was not unexpected, but King's was.

He was basking in enormous praise for his best-selling Penguin History of New Zealand when his life was cut short just two months after Frame died.

King, 58, appeared to have won his battle against cancer the day his car inexplicably ran off the road near Maramarua, south of Auckland, hit a tree and burst into flames. His wife, Maria Jungowska, also died in the fire.

Shadbolt, a master storyteller, was a victim of the cruel mind-wasting disease Alzheimers, but he left a big body of work that will be read for a long time.

Amelia Bastistich's output was much smaller but she wrote eloquently about Dalmatian pioneers of the north.

Mona Anderson, who wrote about the South Island high country, was a hugely popular writer in the 1960s, selling thousands of her books. She was 94 when she died.

Writers couldn't do without booksellers and Alan Preston was revered as the man who established Unity Books in the capital in the late 1960s and still owned it when he died.

The academic world of words lost two noted authorities.

Lexicographer and philologist Robert Burchfield was a New Zealander who went to Oxford and became, eventually, chief editor of the Oxford English dictionaries.

Edinburgh-born Ian Gordon arrived in New Zealand at the age of 29 to become Professor of English at Victoria University, a post he held for almost 40 years.

He taught English and also wrote and broadcast about it, sharing his passion for words with a wide audience.

Polymath is a word that applies to Dame Janet Paul, 84, who died after a rich, full life as publisher, painter and art historian.

She was a notable figure in publishing in the 1950s and 1960s, when her husband ran Paul's Book Arcade in Hamilton.

In other arts fields death claimed prominent Auckland painter and printmaker Pat Hanly, art gallery director Galvan Macnamara and the multi-talented Ashley Heenan - conductor, composer, writer, croquet player, rugby referee and pilot.

We also mourned two scientists who earned giant reputations overseas - Sir William Pickering, who headed Nasa's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California for 20 key years in the space exploration era, and Maurice Wilkins, who shared a Nobel Prize in 1962 for the work that led to the unveiling of DNA, the blueprint of life.

In the final month of the year two big figures in the world of sport and racing were gone.

Athletics coach Arthur Lydiard, who taught Peter Snell and Murray Halberg how to be world beaters and inspired thousands of other runners, died in the United States on December 11, coaching to the last.

Three days later Snow Lupton was dead.

The Waverley farmer trained Kiwi, the horse that stunned the racing world in 1983 with the amazing run that won him the Melbourne Cup.

Other notable New Zealanders who died in 2004 included:

* Ian Stirling, DSC, 82. Noted Fleet Air Arm pilot, Surveyor-General 1973-81

* Sir Peter Elworthy, 68. Farmer, politician, businessman; head of Federated Farmers 1984-87.

* Sir Terry (T.P.) McLean, 90. Long-serving Herald sports editor and writer.

- NZPA