NOTED JOCKEY'S DEATH

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 4, Issue 183, 21 November 1941, Page 5

NOTED JOCKEY'S DEATH

FORMER WHAKATANE' BOY

THE LATE R. W. McTAVISH

Roderick W. McTavisli, the popular Auckland horseman who was killed in a race at Te Rapa on Monday, spent his boyhood in the Whakatane district. His step-father was engineer on one of the Lands Department's big pontoon dredges which dug the Te Rahu and Kopeopeo drainage canals during the years that the last World War was raging and later worked at the old Freezing Works. "Roddy" McTavish and his sister attended the Thornton School in 1914-15 and later the Whakatane School. Even in those days "Roddy" was a very capable horseman, and it used to be remarked by people of the district that because of his light weight he would make a good jockey. And a jockey he did become—one of the best. Over 20 years ago he left Whakatane to become an apprentice jockey, and his family also left the district. In a successful career rode 550 winners. The sympathy of old residents of the Whakatane district goes out to "Roddy's" mother, Mrs Carpenter, whose kindly nature earned for her esteem in the early days of settlement on the Rangitaiki Plains.