By Bridget Tunnicliffe of RNZ
Once former All Black Norm Hewitt rebuilt his own life, he set about rebuilding others, his close friend and biographer says.
The former All Blacks hooker and Dancing with the Stars winner died in the early hours of Tuesday morning, aged 55, from motor neurone disease.
Hewitt was a stalwart of Hawke’s Bay, Hurricanes and Māori rugby and played for the All Blacks from 1993 to 1998.
Hewitt dramatically turned his life around after hitting rock bottom in a very public drunken incident in 1999.
Former MP Michael Laws wrote Hewitt’s biography Gladiator in 2001.
He said Hewitt was diagnosed with the disease several months ago.
“Motor neurone disease is an appalling disease ... it’s been really difficult as a family for Arlene, and the children Elizabeth and Alexander to live through that,” Laws said.
Laws first met Hewitt when he was a young MP for Hawke’s Bay in the early 1990s.
“We’d known each other for a long time before the biography. I always referred to him as Māori boy and I was always white boy to him.
“He’d got into trouble when he was a rugby player in Hawke’s Bay, they were just about to suspend him and maybe expel him from playing rugby.
“We met each other one night when he was driving past and knocked on my door and that was the start of our relationship.
“You couldn’t meet two more disparate different people I think if you tried but we loved each other and we had that bond over all these decades.”
Laws said the incident at the start of 1999 in Queenstown changed everything for Hewitt.
“He’d got drunk and essentially terrorised a couple in their home because he thought he was in the wrong place and he smashed the door.”
A few days later a tearful Hewitt read out a statement at a press conference.
“New Zealand Rugby had written something for him and he didn’t want to say that, it was mostly about apologising to sponsors and the rugby union and things like that.
“So he asked me to write it, he read it ... that’s what he wanted to say, he broke down, realised he needed to change.”
Laws said by that time he had met his future wife Arlene, who helped him through his path to sobriety.
“He just made that decision on that day that he would never drink again and from that moment he rebuilt his life and it’s what happened after that, that really is the story of his life and indeed what happened after rugby.”
He became a fierce advocate speaking out against alcohol abuse and violence, which had been a part of his early life.
Laws said Hewitt, who failed School Cert Māori, started to connect with his Māori culture later in life.
“He discovered a spiritual journey ... and that Māori identity, that culture and spiritualism was very important to him and I saw that in operation when my daughter, Lucy, had been diagnosed with cancer.
“He came [to the hospital] and brought that Māori spirituality with him. Norm was my daughter’s godfather in all senses of that word.”
“And that imbued every aspect of him, that belief that you can and must play a positive role in the lives of everybody who is in trouble - quite Catholic when you think about it but from his point of view it was the Māori way as well.”
Laws said Hewitt later walked in both Pākehā and Māori worlds much more easily and was the personification of both cultures.
Laws said Hewitt told him he saved his life, but Laws said it was the other way around years later, when Hewitt helped him.
“I was depressed, I had become a solo father of three small children and not coping but having to cope.
“He knew that I was in trouble, flew down ... he spent three or four days with me, financially settled some issues that I had as well and then just talked me through issues that I hadn’t been able to talk to anybody else with.
“I became his psychologist when I wrote the book and he became mine later and that only bonded us further, we were brothers.”
Hewitt further endeared himself to the public when he won the first season of Dancing with the Stars in 2005.
“If he was dedicated to something, he was dedicated to it. You’ve got to remember he wasn’t a natural All Black, he made himself an All Black and he made himself a dancer.”
Laws said Hewitt had an incredibly soft gentle side, which he got from his mum.
“And he put that into his dancing, weaved a little bit of Māori spirituality in there and just a complete desire for hard work.”
Laws said he will miss his best friend desperately.
“I will remember him as somebody who intervened not just in my life but in literally hundreds of others and made them better.
“I will remember him through my daughter, Lucy, every day and I will miss him dreadfully. He leaves a gap in my heart but not as much a gap will be left in the heart of Arlene, and the kids.”