Jim | Ōtara
“The biggest challenge in my life was last year when I had a stroke, and I had this stroke right here in the town centre. I couldn’t talk for three days, and those people who knew me cheered. They said; good, good, good. Having to reflect, nothing was wrong with my brain except the vocal chords weren’t working, and trying to get across that message to people in hospital was quite traumatic, as you can imagine.
I had to learn to speak after three days. I had intensive therapy, and I’ve got my speaking ability back about 90 – 95 per cent. I still get tongue-tied when I get excited or stressed by people, which is pretty often. My wife is a Samoan, was a Samoan, and she looked after me very well. I stopped drinking at 65. I’m 75 now, and for the last eight years of the last 10 she had dialysis.
We had to go to the clinic Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturday mornings, and it was a real trial, for her especially. Anyone on dialysis is an angel. The angels gather around them in the unit, called nurses and doctors. I thought I mentioned that, and I think it’s quite traumatic as well. Having survived it is far better.
I grew up in Whanganui. I had quite a traumatic childhood. My sister drowned in the Whanganui River at five or six, and I wasn’t there to help her. A little while after, my father was killed in a motorbike accident. My mother followed within a year. I was barely a teenager. My mother died of stomach cancer, a horrible and painful death. She didn’t know her own mother, let alone her own kids when she died. She said to me, who do you want me to marry? She obviously knew she was dying, but didn’t tell us two kids, my brother and I. We said to her, you can marry whoever you like. She said, which one do you like? Two guys were after her.
We said we liked one of them, so she married him, obviously to provide comfort and help for us, but it didn’t eventuate. The father she hoped he would be abandoned us on his parents, and his parents looked after us for about 18 months and we got dumped into boarding school. Then, we were in the hands of the Public Trust. Fortunately, as it turned out for me and my brother, I loved school. I stayed until the seventh form in the college house in Purnell Street. I became the head boy of the place, and ran it, when I’m looking back, as a dictator. Not as dictatorial as the previous prefects around the place, because they were short-staffed. There were 120 in the establishment; 20 of them girls. So it was a co-ed boarding school. I went to Wanganui Technical College and loved it.
My last teaching job was at Hillary College, Sir Edmond Hillary Collegiate, and when I left there I came and joined the community and joined in with community work, and for the last 20 years I’ve been doing that. I started the network in Ōtara. It morphed into an action group, and it’s morphed again into a group of seven trustees of which I have been elected recently, quite recently to Chairman. To get the job, I guess you have to put in an apprenticeship, in my case of 25 years. I think Ōtara community is the best community in Auckland. Certainly one of the best in New Zealand. I think nobody really appreciates Ōtara. The reason for that is they’re scared of the place. They don’t know it as I do. If they did, they would celebrate its diversity, its richness and its benefit to the wider community in New Zealand.
Oh there’s more if you want. I’ve got more. I’ve got a message for Winston. A message for Winston; don’t forget Ōtara in your demands.”
