LONG SERVICE

Evening Post, Volume CXL, Issue 102, 27 October 1945, Page 9

LONG SERVICE

Parliamentary pressman

To mark the completion %y.'Mr. C. E. Wheeler of 40 years' service as a member of the Parliamentary Press Gallery, his colleagues. entertained him last night at a social function: in Parliament Houses to - which they' invited members of the Ministerial Secretarial corps, i Also presents.was Mr2:.F. W. Doidge, M.P. for Tauranga.y^ho prior to the last war•* was> a member 'of the Press Gallery and was ah of Mr. Wheeler-on the staff of the Auckland "Star." . ■ -,; V

Mr. H. Oakley Browne, another, old. colleague of Mr. Wheeler, presided, and in proposing Mr. Wheeler s. health, which was enthusiastically drunk, referred to Mr. Wheeler's intimate association with New Zealand-politics from the latter days of Mr. R.. J.'Seddon's regime. Mr. Wheeler's; career, as a Parliamentary Press' representative covered a period during which there had been 10 Prime- Ministers. ■<■- Mr. Browne paid tribute to Mr.-Wheeler's ability as' a journalist and his' 1 willingness always to assist his .colleagues. His long service, as a Parliamentary reporter was, unique in New Zealand, and it was thought that it .had ;not been exceeded-in any other, part-of the Empire. Mr. Browne handed IVIr. Wheeler, on behalf of the; gallery; a framed enlarged autographed; graph of the members of the.: gallery taken in' their places in the House^of Representatives and- .with )■' Mr* Speaker (the Hon. F. W. Schramm) ihi. his robes sitting in the Speaker-; chair."-