WAR MEMORIAL FOR OAMARU

Press, Volume LXXIX, Issue 23858, 29 January 1943, Page 6

WAR MEMORIAL FOR OAMARU

LITTLE INTEREST IN PUBLIC MEETING (0.R.) OAMARU, January 28. A public meeting, convened by the Mayor (Mr J. C. Kirkness), which was to have been held in the Opera House this evening, for the purpose of discussing a war memorial for Oamaru, was abandoned indefinitely because of the disappointing attendance. At 8 o’clock, when the meeting was timed to begin, there were 90 persons present, and although a start was deferred for 10 minutes, there were not more than 100 present when the Mayor announced that there would be no meeting. The majority of those present were members of the Returned Services’ Association, which has been conducting a campaign in favour of soldiers’ clubrooms as an official war memorial. The borough council, at a meeting on December 17, supported the association’s proposal which, in the interim, has been the subject of criticism in the correspondence columns of the press. As an alternative, the North Otago Rugby Union advocates a scheme of improvement to Takaro Park and other forms of a memorial have been advanced by private citizens. The Mayor, as chairman, said he could not accept the meeting as being representative of the people of Oamaru, nor sufficiently strong numerically to decide such an important question as the official war memorial. He added; “I trust that on some future occasion the public will respond and give their whole-hearted backing to the move for a war memorial.”