Small town honours

Ruapehu Bulletin, 27 June 1989, Page 2

Small town honours

May I express my congratulations to all who received Queens Birthday Honours. No doubt they all genuinely deserved them but I would like to respectfully enquire just what you have to do to get this recognition. It does appear that some of these honours are passed out willynilly and it depends on who does the nominating. In some cases the persons who have received these honours have only just done something in the last year, that has caught the public eye and the next thing they are on the Honours List. Perhaps to qualify you are required to be either in big business, big sport or just be a big name in the cities. Just because some of these folk are in the limelight does not mean that they are doing something for the community or New Zealand. As well as this most of them actually get paid for what they are doing, and one of these Honours is just the icing on the cake. In our community we

have a lady who has spent probably the last 25 or 30 years working on just about every committee existing, in particular Crippled Children, visiting pensioners and the sick, teaching Sunday school, pre-school, coaching tennis and swimming (and still doing both of these at 58 years of age as well as still taking an active part by swimming and playing tennis.) As well as this the person involved has raised six sons and a daughter (with help from her husband of course!) About eight years ago, without her knowledge, I put it all iogether and forwarded the list of her services to the community to the Internal Affairs Department, Wellington. I did receive a reply that it was approved in Wellington but it would have to be forwarded to England for final approval. Much to my dismay it was turned down in England. On receipt of this letter I

referred it to the local Rotary Club to see if they could award some form of recognition for community services but failed to even get a reply from them. I feel quite strongly that if this person was in a city and had a good position and a big name then she would have been recognised, nominated and probably accepted for an honour, but coming from a small town has failed to get recognition for the services she has rendered to this community. Perhaps if she had been nominated by a big name this may have helped. She does not go around advertising what she has done in the past or is doing at present but I would dearly love to see her get the recognition she deserves. It all comes back to the plain fact, in this world IT DEPENDS ON WHO YOU ARE AND WHO YOU KNOW.

Faith Wise

Raetihi