The Press Junior SATURDAY, APRIL 20, 1940. Fitting Memorials

Press, Volume LXXVI, Issue 23000, 20 April 1940, Page 2 (Supplement)

The Press Junior SATURDAY, APRIL 20, 1940. Fitting Memorials

To-day in “The Gay Gazette” there is an announcement about a memorial to Miss Esther Glen, •'Lady Gay” of the “Sun” and “The Press.” The memorial is to be a cot in the Cholmondeley Home, to be known as the Esther Glen Memorial Cot. The money required—£lo0 —to establish this cot will be raised by subscriptions from all who were Miss Glen’s friends, and the thousands who, though they did not know her personally, received her help and encouragement through her writing, or through the many charitable works she undertook. Already a considerable sum — £ IF—has been given to the fund by the few people to whom the memorial scheme is already known. The extraordinary thing about this memorial is that, ever since the very first days after Miss Glen’s death, suggestions about it have come from all parts of New Zealand; and all the suggestions for a memorial have been the same: a cot for a child in the Cholmondeley Home. It is not often that there is such agreement in such matters; the reason is that Miss Glen’s own enthusiastic and untiring ■ work for the children who go to the convalescent home at Governor s Bay was recognised by all Shipmates and Sunbeams as a most important and lasting work. The Shipmates and Sunbeams of Miss Glen’s years on the “Sun,” as well as those of her years on “The Press,” took an active part in all the helpful works, that Miss Glen organised for the poor and the unfortunate —the Christmas pudding making, the winter missions, the Christmas missions, and, lately, the upkeep of “The Press Ship” cot at the Cholmondeley Home. Of all these works this is the most lasting one: year after year there will be a cot in tho Cholmondeley Home paid for by funds raised by Shipmates _ and Sunbeams. This was Miss Glen s inspiration. And now there will be a second cot to be occupied year after: yeah by a procession ol children who will he made healthy and strong in'the idea) Governor’s Bay air,-. The cot will still bear Miss Glen’s name when the great-grandchildren of today’s Shipmates and Sunbeams are reading their newspaper. This cot will be a memorial that will keep alive the memory of Miss Glen long after all those who ever knew her are dead; it is a very good and fitting memorial to one- who, as a friend of children, spent most of her life working to help and guide them. Too few memorials are as suitable as this one; too often a memorial is erected without thought for the life and the character of the person honoured. A graven image of a great man or a great woman stands against the elements to record the fame of such a man or such a woman: blit it does nothing to perpetuate or carry on or increase the good works for which the remembered ohe was known. It is necessary

for memorials to be more than spectacular for them to do effective honour to the great: otherwise there might as well be no memorial Other than those cherished in the hiirids of the people in whose time £ great worker lived. The put-pose of memorials is to perpetuate or make lasting the virtues or achievements of the great: the presence of the Esther Glen Memorial Cot in the Cholmondeley Home will continue to extend, for as many years as the home exists, Miss Glen’s goodness and kindness to children in her lifetime.