Mayor’s Quick Response To Frontiersmen’s Emergency Call

Press, Volume XCIX, Issue 29224, 7 June 1960, Page 3

Mayor’s Quick Response To Frontiersmen’s Emergency Call

(New Zealand Press Association)

INVERCARGILL, June 5. The Mayor of Invercargill (Mr A. L. Adamson) was pulled out of bed on Saturday morning to open a Dominion conference. Shortly after 9.45 a.m„ he was due to give a civic reception to the New Zealand Command of the Legion of Frontiersmen, but because a squadron commanders’ meeting was running behind schedule, no-one noticed the Mayor was not there. Shortly before 10.15 a.m. delegates entered the conference hall,

but still there was no Mayor. Then there were a few red faces. The padre, the Rev. K. Mcßae, was waiting to say the opening prayer and this jolted the memory of two Invercargill officials. They could remember inviting the Mayor to the annual reunion and the church parade, but they had forgotten to ask him to open the conference. So, while the officer commanding the Invercargill troop, Lieutenant S. E. C. Smith, rose from the conference table to welcome delegates, the local secretary, Sergeant J. Braxton, got busy on the telephone, inviting a sleepy Mayor to the conference. Within 20 minutes the Mayor washed, changed from his pyjamas into a light blue suit, and dashed more than two miles into the city Nevertheless, he apologised for being late. “I always pride myself on keeping appointments, but something slipped up in this case,” he said.