About the Publisher

Waimarino Bulletin, Volume 5, Issue 1, 3 June 1987, Page 15

About the Publisher

This article, printed here in part, was published in the first edition of the Bulletin. John Sandford still operates his publishing business in Auckland, producing tourist and noliday guides. Publisher of our new newspaper John Sandford was born and raised in Raetihi. Although he left the district in 1957 following the death of his father David Sandford. John has visited the district many times over the years and kept in touch with local friends during that time. The Sandford family' s connection with the Waimarino began when two brolhers William (Bert) and Arthur Sandford took up two bush sections at Mangoihe on the Pipiriki-Raetihi Road in 1908. Formerly builders in Christchurch, Bert and Arthur started building houses in the area to provide income as they cleared their land for farming. During that time

they helped construct the second Pipiriki house after the first one was destroyed by fire. Bert Sandford and his. wife Eleanor (Ellie) had four children, Marjorie, Douglas, Kenneth, and David. In 1919 the family sold the farm at Mangoihe and moved to Raetihi taking over the building company set up by Arthur Sandford a year or two earlier.

Ohakune, the Waimarino County Council offices, the slanted bridge at Orautoha and most significant in a tourist sense, the "bridge to rtowhere" at Mangapurua. Dave's wife Lil, and five young sons, John, Bruce, Laurie, Michael and Robin left Raetihi following the death of her husband and moved to Whangaparaoa just north of Auckland where she still lives with her second husband Jack King. John finished school at Whangaparaoa and Orewa. After leaving school he returned to work at Ron Jones Raetihi milk factory for a year in 1964. He then joined a publishing company in Wellington as an advertising salesman. In 1968 he began his own business in Auckland producing farming magazines and tourist and holiday guides. John will continue to operate his business in Auckland. He also has a similar business operating in Queensland, Australia. A close family affinity for the Waimarino and a great faith in the potential for the future of the Ruapehu region prompted John to become involved in plans to produce a properly funded and organised community newspaper for the region. The project to produce the newspaper has involved a great deal of planning to ensure long term survival and what you are reading now is the culmination of that effort.

Bert's youngest son David (Dave), father of our publisher, John Sandford, joined the building firm in 1929 and became a partner with his father in W.H. Sandford & Son about 1950 and finally took over the business several years before he died in Raetihi in 1957. Over the years the family were involved in a great deal of building in the Waimarino. Some of their projects being the Waimarino Hospital and nursing home, the town bridges at Raetihi and