Shona and Cliff Wickham shared a passion for vintage cars. This photo was taken in 2015 when they featured in the Rotorua Daily Post's Our People. Photo / File
Shona and Cliff Wickham shared a passion for vintage cars. This photo was taken in 2015 when they featured in the Rotorua Daily Post's Our People. Photo / File
Cliff Wickham didn't do posh – he was your salt-of-the-earth Kiwi joker.
He loved people and people loved him, which was demonstrated at his funeral on Saturday.
The crowd that came to farewell him spilled out of Osborne's funeral home's chapel into its reception room and out to the carpark.
The vehicles parked there were as big a tribute to Cliff as the hundreds who came to celebrate the colourful life of a colourful man.
Cliff Wickham with his 1963 Ford Anglia in June 2017. Photo / File
The carpark was packed with vintage, veteran and classic cars of the kind Cliff adored and kept in pristine nick, plying his trade as an automotive electrician and A grade mechanic. It was an apt guard of honour to farewell the long-time member, committee member and former president of the Vintage and Veteran Car Club (VVCC) and even longer-time club house bar manager.
That was not the only presidency he held. For years he led the Jim Beam Collectors' Club as North Island president.
Nor were "beamers" (Jim Beam bottles) the only memorabilia he gloried in. Anything vaguely connected to the motor trade, be it a sign, spare wheel or odd-shaped spanner, Cliff found a home for.
Physically, and with the biggest ho-ho-ho laugh for many a mile around, Cliff "out-Santad" Santa.
It was a role he frequently filled. Son Geoff recounts how, in Cliff's volunteer fire fighting days, he'd be driven around members' homes on the back of an engine dispensing gifts "coming home very merry indeed".
In an Our People profile in 2015 featuring Cliff and the love of his life, Shona, they talked with affection of those volunteer fire fighting days in Ōhope, the place they met as teenagers playing indoor bowls.
Fire fighting competition days often brought them to Rotorua. After Cliff's 1986 appointment as Cable Price's service manger, it became their permanent home.
From Cable Price, Cliff switched to tutoring automotive engineering at the then Waiariki Polytech.
Made redundant, Cliff didn't sit around moping. He and Shona opened Cliff's Auto Services and its allied business BOP Strutwise with its very Cliff Wickham tagline: "Having trouble keeping your stays up?"
As well as older cars, Cliff dabbled in stock cars, driving his one and only up Tikitere Hill because it was too steep for the trailer towing it.
That "stockie" came to grief on its maiden voyage when Cliff crashed into a 44-gallon drum that rolled into his path on the Paradise Valley's raceway.
Rotorua mechanic Cliff Wickham with a restored 1939 Chevy Coup in July 2006. Photo / File
Cliff did what Cliff did so well, he hooted with laughter and moved to other interests.
The major interest in his life was Shona, their family and grandchildren.
When a stroke felled him in January he insisted the couple renew their marriage vows.
Rev Tom Poata, who officiated at that ceremony and Cliff's funeral, succinctly sums up his "best mechanic mate" as a person who enjoyed life, a person you were happy to call your friend.
"Only generous people have turnouts like this at their funerals," he said.
Cliff Wickham is survived by wife Shona, son Geoff, daughter Sandra, four grandchildren and was "great Koro" to one. He was 70 when bowel cancer claimed his life on December 19.
