Don sees no reason to leave after 33 years

Waimarino Bulletin, Volume 6, Issue 232, 23 February 1988, Page 28

Don sees no reason to leave after 33 years

The Waimarino district is full of interesting people. Why doesn't the Bulletin print more stories about some of the old identities in this area? Statements and questions like these have prompted us to start this new column. It will appear regularly. Readers suggestions of future story ideas are invited. To launch the new column today, we profile local identity Don Hancock.

When Don Hancock retired after more than three decades with Government Life, h e couldn't think of a reason to leave. So the 67-year-old Ohakune man just stayed. And he intends to carry on staying. "We've got an acre in Raetihi Road and a lovely four bedroom home.Our kids have left home, but why 1 should we sell? There's just no reason to." That's the simple explanation Don Hancock gives for retiring in his home town. He and his w i f e Moreen, a teacher at Ohakune Primary School for more than 30 years, are both now officially "retired". But in the typical Hancock manner for which they are well known in the Waimarino, the word "retirement" is nonsense if you try applying it to them. Don's problem, he says, is that he has no hobbies and never has had. So he just keeps working. So while he provides day-to-day business advice to a number o f small self-employed operators in the community, actually helping one of them with a physical hand to mow lawns commercially, Moreen is fully occupied as administrator of the Access employment scheme in the area. Previously Mrs Hancock was a senior teacher at the school and when she retired 18

months ago she held the position of principal. She came to the Waimarino in 1956 as a first-year teacher. That was when she met Don, then a young in"H surance agent who had just come to town. The Hancocks have three adult children, Jane, aged 28, who is married with two children and lives at Wan- - ganui, Sue, aged 25, a

graphic designer in Wellington, and 22-year-old Chris who is shearing in Central Otago. How Don came to be in Ohakune is a long story. An Englishman b y birth, he was brought up in a small town called Potters Bar in Hertfordshire, 25 miles out of London. His father was an accountant who travelled into London each day while Don's mother ran the small country pub in which they lived. He has one sister, aged about 70, who has lived in Australia for most of her life and a twin brother who still

lives in England. Don enlisted for the Royal Air Force when the Second World War broke out and served as an engineer in the Middle East. He was attached to Transport Command in Cairo, Cyprus, Syria and Palestine and grew to love the Middle East. One of the main jobs of Transport Command was to airlift British personnel and ex-pris-oners of war. In Don's time they shifted

30,000 men. On many occasions they had to transport sick and dying soldiers back to Britain, a duty that was both shocking, due to the diseased and maimed state of many of the men, and satisfying in being able to take them home to family and freedom. After the war Don stayed in the Middle East but in 1946 returned to London to

take up a position with BOAC which later became British Airways. A chance to emigrate to New Zealand arose in 1947 when the Royal New Zealand Air Force advertised for exRAF personnel. The journey down under aboard an enormous

Avro York, a modified Lancaster bomber, was an amusing event. Don, an RAF staff sergeant, was put in charge of 12 other men. Their journey took seven weeks because of all the 1 1 stops, they had t o make for refueling and paperwork. The aircraft also "broke down" in towns like Singapore, enabling some of the men on board who had done service there to show the o t h e r s

important places like night spots. After landing in Christchurch and discovering that New Zealand consisted of "two islands", Don was posted to Ohakea and later to Woodbourne near Blenheim. Coming from the RAF, in some ways he felt the RNZAF was backward with Tiger Moths still in service. He did four years with

the RNZAF and then took a civilian job as canteen manager at Trentham. After adjusting to "civi street" he joined Government Life as an insurance agent in 1955. His first post was a six-month assignment

in Ohakune. The rest is history. "I've been here ever since. And I've got no regrets." The highlight of his retirement has been the visit to New Zealand in 1986 of his twin brother Keith, who was a British commando during the war and is a travel agent now in London. Their reunion was quite remarkable because they had not seen one another for 40 years. In fact, if it were not for their respective wives corresponding over the years he is quite sure they might have lost contact completely. Over the four decades the brothers exchanged just one letter. That was 20 years ago and the letter from brother Keith remarked, "This could become a habit." Keith Hancock and his wife Jean came to New Zealand for the wedding of their d a u g h ter, a f o r m e r British Airways executive, who married a former Taumarunui man named Kim Rogers who is an investment broker with the Aetna insurance company. Keith and Jean visited New Zealand again over the recent ChristmasNew Year period and spent some time in Ohakune with Don and Moreen. The future is set for Don Hancock. He plans simply to stay put in Ohakune. Why? "Because I just love it here.".