Helen Clark with her father, George Clark, who passed away at the age of 103.
On Monday, December 15, a community event attended by about 300 people took place at the RSA in the seaside settlement of Waihī Beach. It was the celebration of life for my father, George Clark.
In my eulogy for Dad, who died at the age of 103 and 9 months, I was able to mark a distinct passage of time in New Zealand’s history. I mentioned the two World Wars, and the Great Depression of the 20th century, but in his great lifespan were also the foundation of the modern welfare state, the increasing recognition of the Treaty of Waitangi, the opening up of the New Zealand economy, the changing of the electoral system, and many other social and cultural changes that accompanied this transformation of a small democracy in the South Pacific.
My father was born in a nursing home in Frankton on March 8, 1922, the second of the six children of Fred and Elizabeth Grace Clark.
Like so many of his generation, he grew up in a family scarred by World War I.
His mother’s closest brother, George Arthur, after whom he was named, was killed in an assault on the Hindenburg Line in France a month before the 1918 Armistice.
Of his two paternal uncles, one, Frank died at Gallipoli, and the other, Herbert died in a military camp in Wiltshire in 1917 while awaiting deployment to France. That left Dad’s father, Fred Clark, as the only surviving child in the family, as two other siblings had died very young.
When my father reached school age, the public education system had not reached the then remote, back-country community where his family farmed. Then the Kaniwhaniwha School opened in a small building, which the Education Board rented from Bert Steel for five shillings a week, in October 1928.
Steel was the teacher. A new one-room school opened in 1931.
My grandparents valued education, and sent Dad and his older brother, Tom, to Auckland together to board at Mount Albert Grammar School. After three years in Auckland, both boys came back to the farm in the late 1930s. World War II intervened.
Dad became a member of the Te Pahu Home Guard and ran the farm with his father.
It was to that farm that my mother, Margaret McMurray, came as a bride in 1949, and where we four daughters grew up. We were Dad’s farmhands – and seldom Mum’s house help. It was much more fun riding on tractors and horses and rounding up sheep and lambs.
Dad and Mum wanted the very best for their daughters, and supported us after our years at Te Pahu Primary School to attend boarding schools and tertiary education. It is fair to say that what Dad probably saw as the city ideas I came home with from Auckland were often at variance with his, and my teenage years and early twenties featured disagreements between us – not least over sporting contact with South Africa.
To my chagrin, Dad went to South Africa on an All Blacks supporters tour in the 1970s. Then in 1981, he was one of the outraged fans at Rugby Park, Hamilton, where protesters occupied the field and prevented the game from proceeding.
This was also an era when he chaired the local National Party branch and was a strong backer of Marilyn Waring as the MP for Raglan.
All that seems a very long time ago, and all is, if not forgotten, certainly forgiven. When I entered Parliament in 1981 for a political party, Labour, which had little support in the farming community from which I came, Dad and Mum gave me very strong family support.
They loved coming to the openings of Parliament, and eventually to swearing-in ceremonies at Government House and to stay at Premier House. In 1987, Dad and Mum sold the family farm and moved to Waihī Beach. Dad’s politics changed over time, too.
As our mother’s health declined, Dad was her primary caregiver, which became an increasingly demanding task. After Mum passed away in August 2011, Dad proved to be very resilient. He made new friends a generation younger than himself. We called their Wednesday afternoon meetings each week the “coffee club”.
When I came home from New York in 2017, Dad was still sprightly in his mid-nineties. Over time, though, he needed increased support to continue living at home. With the pandemic I was grounded at home and able to help a lot more, which, with family and local support systems, I was able to do until Dad’s passing on December 6.
A lot happened over that more than a century of Dad’s life. And it was that “flux of life” which was reflected at the gathering in the RSA. Two former Governors-General were present, as were two leaders of the Opposition past and present, from both sides of the House.
Yes, Red mixed with Blue in the audience. As did Town and Country. There was a large representation of extended family, and many others from rural and provincial New Zealand who knew George. And, given my biography, friends and colleagues also came from the cities, Auckland and Wellington especially.
The Ode of Remembrance was read. A bugler sounded The Last Post and Reveille to bring proceedings to a close.
And so it ended. Vale George Clark. Haere rā. A life well lived.
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