LAST TRIBUTES

Press, Volume LXXII, Issue 21747, 1 April 1936, Page 12

LAST TRIBUTES

FUNERAL OF MR J.

FRASER

(PRESS ASSOCIATION TELEGBAM.)

AUCKLAND, March 31

Representatives of the Royal New Zealand Air Force, the Auckland Aero Club, and the Auckland Returned Soldiers' Association attended the funeral of Mr James Fraser, who was killed in making a parachute jump at the McGregor appeal air pageant at. Rongotai aerodrome, Wellington, on Saturday.

Draped with the Union Jack, on which was a spray of red poppies given by the Wellington Returned Soldiers' Association, the coffin was taken from the express this morning and then conveyed to a mortuary chapel, where a service was conducted in the afternoon by the Rev. R. N. Alley. The Mayor of Auckland, Mr Ernest Davis, and the Town Clerk, Mr J. S. Brigham. attended the service. The pallbearers were Messrs J. Roff (Auckland Returned Soldiers' Association), A. C. Tucker (president of the Newmarket branch), and J. Ritchie and J. Cavell. At the Waikumete cemetery the burial service was conducted by Mr Alley, accompanied by Pastor H. Thornley, padre of the Onehunga branch of the Auckland Returned Soldiers' Association. The poppies from the Wellington Returned Soldiers' Association were placed on the coffin before it was lowered into the grave in the returned soldiers' section of the cemetery. A plate on the coffin bore the name of Lance-Corporal James Fraser—his rank in the Great War—his age, and regimental number. Wreaths were sent by the Mayor and members of the City Council, the president and executive of the New Zealand Aero Club, the executive of the Wellington Aero Club, the Auckland Aero Club, the Manawatu Aero club, officers and staff of the Royal New Zealand Air Force base at Hobsonville, the South Auckland Motor and Air Carnival Association, and the staff of Electrolux, Ltd. The Auckland Returned Soldiers' Association sent a wreath of laurel leaves and red poppies, and former members of the Black Watch Regiment in Auckland, to which Fraser had been attached at one stage, sent a wreath of red flowers bound with a ribbon of Black Watch tartan.