DELAYED MEMORIAL
FORMER PRIME MINISTER UNSIGHTLY PILE QF BRICKS Special to the Daily Times. AUCKLAND, May 28. Instead of an interdenominational church which was to have been built to the memory of Mr J. G. Coates, there stands to-day in the Matakohe cemetery grounds, where he is buried, a forlorn pile of overgrown bricks that is a monument only to indifference and procrastination. Shortly after the Prime Minister, Mr Fraser, announced on September 22, 1944, that the Government had decided to erect a church that would be “a fitting memorial to one whose services to New Zealand in peace and war will ever be remembered,” about 15 lorry loads of bricks arrived by rail from Auckland and were dumped on the proposed site. Apparently forgotten by nearly everyone except the angry residents of Matakohe, the big sprawling pile is lying where it was tumbled off the trucks. The bricks are an embarrassment in more ways than one to the people of Matakohe who feel strongly about the delay in erecting the memorial. They regard the neglected heap as a blot on the' district in which Mr Coates was born and buried.
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Bibliographic details
Otago Daily Times, Issue 26473, 29 May 1947, Page 6
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191DELAYED MEMORIAL Otago Daily Times, Issue 26473, 29 May 1947, Page 6
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