SPCA's end to erase a legacy

Should the closure of the SPCA Wairarapa centre come about, it will erase a little part of history involving a man who devoted his time to dogs and cats and left the SPCA a surprise gift.

The soon-to-be-empty SPCA dog compound has a plaque commemorating SC Houston, who left the centre the $100,000 used to build the compound.

Former centre manager Val Ball remembers the man, who "didn't talk much at all", visiting the centre every Friday for "about a year".

"Once a week on a Friday afternoon he would come in and make himself a cuppa.

"He would go into the cat room and play with the cats for a while and then he would go out to the dog area and spend about an hour with the dogs."

"He would then come back into the centre."

Mrs Ball said Mr Houston was a strange man, who was very quiet.

"Sometimes he would talk to us and sometimes he wouldn't."

One day in 1998 Mr Houston's weekly stop-ins ceased.

About one month after his final visit a letter from a lawyer turned up at the centre.

"It was just out of the blue, unexpected and out of the blue," said Mrs Ball.

Mr Houston had died and left the centre $100,000 in his will.

"I felt tearful and grateful."

It gave the centre enough money to build the dog compound at Ngaumutawa Rd.

Mrs Ball said she did not know anything of Mr Houston's background but understood he had died of cancer.

Sydney Campbell Houston was born in 1922 and worked as a dairy farmer on his father's farm in Nireaha with his two brothers.

He also bequeathed $100,000 to the Eketahuna fire station.

Mr Houston was a returned soldier and is buried in Eketahuna.