Helen McConnochie was also one of the first recipients of one of broadcasting's highest honours, the Bill Toft Memorial Award. Photo / NZME
Obituary: Helen McConnochie
1925 – 2022
Napier's Helen McConnochie was a pioneer in women's broadcasting in New Zealand.
She passed away peacefully at home in Napier on March 14, 2022, aged 96.
She started working in radio in New Zealand in the late 1950s and went on to have a 41-year career in the medium, including her own regular programme promoting and advocating for people with disabilities.
McConnochie was also one of the first recipients of one of broadcasting's highest honours, the Bill Toft Memorial Award.
It all started with a passion for speech and drama, encouraged by her father Sam, a Glaswegian who stimulated her interest in reading and reciting the classics, and her mother May.
May was a piano teacher from Taranaki, who encouraged Helen to travel to further her talent in performing arts.
But Helen's education did not start well. She was strapped on her first day at Nelson Park School and on her second day the 1931 Hawke's Bay earthquake struck.
Her father rode his bike around cracks and fissures in the road and found her taking cover under a truck.
After the quake she and her mother evacuated to Woodville for a time.
On her return to Napier, Helen attended Te Awa Primary School, where she wasn't particularly interested in schoolwork but she enjoyed and was successful at sports, languages, performance and poetry.
At Napier Intermediate she received prizes for athletics and drama.
At 12, she started taking speech lessons and chose drama over athletics. Her strong interest in speech and drama continued at Napier Girls' High School and she had plans to take it further.
Helen's first job after leaving school was at Hector McGregor Electrical, where she worked to save money to study drama in London.
While working, she continued her speech and drama lessons, took part in competitions, completed her Trinity letters (ATCL and LTCL) and performed in local plays and musicals.
In the early 1950s Helen travelled to England, via Pitcairn Island and Panama, to continue her study.
Her accounts of this time reveal her excitement and enthusiasm for the social and cultural life of London despite the impacts of World War II being evident with rationing and bombed buildings.
When she missed out on a place with the London Academy of Music (Drama Section) she secured a place at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, where she was told "Thank heavens you haven't a New Zealand accent".
She did a range of jobs in and around London to fund her study including working in a furniture shop and as a farm labourer.
When she returned to New Zealand, Helen taught speech and English in a number of schools including Iona College, gave private speech lessons and directed amateur plays.
Then an opportunity arose to get a foot in the door in broadcasting.
She first worked on the women's hour at 2ZC in Napier before completing her training in Wellington.
Stints followed at radio stations in Nelson and Wanganui, and she was frequently called
upon to compere fashions shows and other community events.
By the mid-1960s, Helen had itchy feet and returned to the UK, where she worked in the National Economic and Development Office.
While there she was asked to be a guest speaker at the annual Women of Scotland luncheon.
When she returned to New Zealand, Helen was appointed to the women's hour programme in Rotorua.
She threw herself into learning Esperanto, which at the time was intended to be a universal second language for international communication.
And it was in Rotorua that Helen met a young writer called Fiona Kidman, who encouraged Helen to return to producing plays.
On learning of Helen's passing, Dame Fiona described Helen as "a good friend and mentor".
The rest of Helen's working life was in Wellington. She worked in Special Projects at Broadcasting House on a range of programmes including Bookshelf and Feminine Viewpoint, which later became Viewpoint.
She took over a Saturday programme, Saturday Miscellany, and broadened its scope to include material from overseas broadcasters.
Word spread about her programme, and she was invited to the US for an American Women in Radio and TV conference and where she was asked to be the organisation's first international member.
An invitation followed to attend the International Women in Broadcasting and TV conference in communist Bulgaria.
It was in 1979 that Helen established the radio programme Future Indicative which started her long immersion in the disability sector, where she was seconded to committees and was involved in the International Year of Disabled People in 1981.
In 1986 she received the Bill Toft award, presented to radio and television broadcasters who demonstrate leadership in broadcasting excellence.
Helen retired in 1991 and returned to Napier to live. She continued her roles in disability advocacy and pursued a range of interests in art, the Napier Museum Committee, the New Zealand Book Council and the University of the Third Age (U3A).
In her retirement Helen also compiled a book – After Words – which featured Hawke's Bay earthquake survivors recalling their experiences.
Helen is remembered fondly by her family and friends as a tenacious, patient, polite, interested and curious person who kept her brain active until her passing last month, reading a wide range of books and always completing the Listener cryptic crosswords.
Obituary by Helen's nieces Alison Robertson and Janet Wright