Secretary Retires After 44 Years

Press, Volume CVII, Issue 31542, 2 December 1967, Page 3

Secretary Retires After 44 Years

When Miss Nelle Hall began working with Pyne, Gould, Guinness in 1924 one of the office staff was Mr Jack Acland, now chairman of the New Zealand Wool Board. He was among many past and present colleagues who attended a function held this week to mark her retirement after 44 years service with the firm.

With the exception of two directors, there is now only one member of the office staff who joined the firm before Miss Hall.

Through the years she has worked with two generations of tiie families and has watched the progress of three generations in the directorate. Colleagues and clients alike regard Miss Hall as a friend. She has received a number of telegrams from well wishers from all over Canterbury, and from Marlborough and Auckland.

Times have indeed changed since her early days in the land and overseas export deSartment, where she became ead ypis and was appointed secretary to the managing director in 1931.

Then there were only six girls in the Christchurch office—4o are now employed. Methods have also changed. Miss Hall recalls that before 1925, when the first woman

ledger keeper was employed, the stock clerks wrote their own ledgers. In that year, too, a machine took over the duties of a male clerk cheque writer.

With retirement from the post of secretary to the chairman of directors, Miss Hall is looking forward to leisure to indulge her interests of reading, gardening, the arts, and cricket. Music and cricket have been long-standing loves of her family, and Miss Hall is also a keen threatre-goer and ballet enthusiast

Two trips abroad have increased her interest in the "outside world” and although she has no immediate plans, Miss Hall hopes to see more of the Australian outback. On her retirement tributes were paid to Miss Hall by Mr G. N. Francis, managing director, who also presented her with a cheque on behalf of the directors and staff, Mr E. R. Sutherland, southern branch director, and Mr Harman Warren who spoke on behalf of the firm’s head office.