Crew members Jenny Spencer and Rose Fisher at the Masters Games Village on Waitangi Day 2019. Photo / Bevan Conley
Crew members Jenny Spencer and Rose Fisher at the Masters Games Village on Waitangi Day 2019. Photo / Bevan Conley
Masters Games youth ambassador Jaime Mayberry received the Games flame from Masters Games Dunedin manager Vicki Kestila.
Photo /File
February 2
The Whanganui War Memorial Centre in Pukenamu Queen's Park officially reopened on Thursday in readiness for the 30th anniversary Downer New Zealand Masters Games which opened on February 1 and ran until February 10.
Built in 1960, the centre is a living memorial to the servicemen andwomen who lost their lives during World War II.
A games village was set up on the forecourt of the War Memorial Centre and New Zealand Masters Games participants were welcomed into the centre as they came in to register.
The death of long-serving Whanganui District Councillor Sue Westwood QSM prompted the Chronicle to re-run John Maslin's story written when she resigned from the council in 2016.
Westwood's first taste of local government came in 1981, when she became the first woman elected to the Waitotara County Council. She and her late husband Graham had moved their family to St Johns Hill, which then had its own Otamatea town board.
"I stood because I didn't want to be amalgamated with the city and have to pay for the sewerage. Now 34 years later I still don't want to pay for it," she said.
She was soon chairing the county's planning committee and it became a hallmark of her career - that interest in detail and abiding by rules and regulations that determine how councils operate.
"The best advice I got was from county clerk Colin Ardell who told me to respect the process and let the process respect you. I've repeated that ad nauseum to the point I've been labelled the bloody process queen. I don't care."
People digging for treasure at Castlecliff beach during the CoLab Australasian Glass Conference.
Photo / Bevan Conley
February 16
A large glass chandelier made up of work by 40 New Zealand and international glass artists was the centrepiece for a conference that attracted more than 200 Australasian glass artists to Whanganui.
Glass artists Leanne Williams and Jim Dennison were tasked with co-ordinating the giant chandelier, now on display at the Sarjeant on the Quay.
CoLab opened at Putiki Marae followed by an action-packed weekend with speakers, workshops, hot glass demos and public events including a Beach Furnace and Dig In at Castlecliff.
Hundreds of people turned up to dig for buried glass treasures and to view the furnace built from bricks salvaged from the old furnace at New Zealand Glassworks, slurry using clay from Marton and sand from Castlecliff Beach, and fired by driftwood.
Ray Stevens. Photo / File
February 28
The month ended with the death of former Whanganui District Councillor and businessman Ray Stevens, who died on February 26 after a brief illness. Zaryd Wilson paid tribute to a the community stalwart.
It was a standing joke in the Chronicle newsroom that Ray Stevens should be put on the payroll, such was the frequency with which he called up with news tips. If he could have been the first to inform us of his own death this week, he probably would have.
From a prime spot at his Westmere petrol station, Ray would often call us with reports of police chases, car accidents, downed power lines or gossip he'd heard at the petrol pump. He served a remarkable 19 years as a Whanganui district councillor, and he took his role as a representative of the district's people seriously.
His antics as an elected representative must have had officials tearing their hair out at times, because Ray's loyalty was never to the organisation he represented. It was to the people he represented. After all, he was that friendly guy at the petrol station on the way out of town. A petrol station that may have had Caltex emblazoned across the canopy but which everyone in Whanganui simply referred to as Ray's Place.
That says everything about how Ray was regarded. Mischievous? Definitely. Did he always get it right? No one does. Is Whanganui a better place for his service? Absolutely. This community will miss him greatly.
