Patrick Bronte died aged 45 on November 7, 2025, and is remembered for his dedication to military history.
Patrick Bronte died aged 45 on November 7, 2025, and is remembered for his dedication to military history.
Tributes are flowing for former Central Hawke’s Bay’s passionate military historian Patrick Bronte after his death at age 45.
Patrick’s passing on November 7 was a result of deteriorating health, his older sister Sarah Bronte told Hawke’s Bay Today.
His story is one of determination and dedication after amisplaced dive into a swimming hole in Waipukurau’s Tukituki River on December 27, 1996, left him a tetraplegic, with “just enough movement in one hand to operate a wheelchair”.
After extensive rehabilitation and a return home to Waipukurau, he began recording the stories of war veterans, for posterity.
In the beginning, he was using a basic handycam, with help to operate the camera.
He later used a mouth stick to operate far more sophisticated technology, and produced a website, Ngā Toa, to make his interviews freely available to the public.
In 2024, Patrick was made a member of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to military history.
Sarah described her brother as a determined man who loved Star Wars and guns. He shared a military history passion with their father.
“His ultimate holiday was going to the Waiouru army museum as a kid.
Sarah Bronte with her younger brother Patrick Bronte as children.
“He was madly into anything war-related or shooting things from a very young age; he was also the typical cheeky younger brother.”
She said, despite the challenges he faced, he remained as determined as ever.
“Having that disability... especially in the early years, he didn’t sink into ‘poor me’, he carried on trying to do things.”
Sarah said during a trip to America after the accident, Patrick bought a device that enabled him to shoot a modified shotgun using his mouth.
She said she didn’t fully appreciate the significance of her brother’s almost three decades of work until after his death.
“He started that really early, it was probably within a couple of years of the accident... the first one was a friend of my dad’s, this old guy called Bones.”
She believed the sessions between Patrick and the war veterans he spoke with were a form of therapy for each of them.
“To me, he was a talker... but to these guys, he was a really good listener and he knew what to ask them.
“He just wanted the stories told, he wasn’t looking to make money, he wasn’t looking to be famous - he could have done both with it, but he didn’t, he was just doing something he was so passionate about.”
Sarah said they were still counting, but estimated there were at least 700 interviews in the archive, which they planned to keep together as a collection in accordance with Patrick’s wishes to preserve the body of work.
The NZ Remembrance Army paid tribute to Patrick with a social media post stating NZ was immeasurably richer for what Patrick achieved.
“Both the NZDF and the wider veteran community owe him a profound debt of gratitude.
“Through sheer determination and passion, Patrick went on to record the personal stories of more than 500 NZ veterans, creating a priceless archive of service history that spans from the Second World War through to Vietnam and beyond.
“Without any formal connection to the NZ Defence Force, Patrick undertook this monumental task simply because he believed these stories mattered, that they deserved to be heard, preserved, and remembered.
“To put Patrick’s legacy into perspective, his body of work exceeds the collective oral history efforts of all three single-service museums combined. His recordings capture the voices of those who served - soldiers, sailors, airmen, and women - ensuring that their memories and sacrifices will not fade with time.”
Sarah said they were in the process of organising a memorial for Patrick with the RSA.
Michaela Gower joined Hawke’s Bay Today in 2023 and is based out of the Hastings newsroom. She covers Dannevirke and Hawke’s Bay news and loves sharing stories about farming and rural communities.
