DEATH OF MR. W. CRAWFORD

New Zealand Journal of Agriculture, Volume 79, Issue 3, 15 September 1949, Page 224

DEATH OF MR. W. CRAWFORD

THE death occurred suddenly on July 28 of Mr. William Crawford, Superintendent of Cheese Instruction, Department of Agriculture, Wellington.

Mr. Crawford came from a farming family and was born at Maheno, near Oamaru, on September 9, 1889. His career in the dairy industry began in the Woodlands cheese factory in Southland in 1905. In 1906 he went to Taranaki, where, in addition to furthering his knowledge of cheesemaking, he gained experience in buttermaking in the dual-plant factory of the Mells Dairy Company at Mokoia. During- the 1907-08 and 1908-09 seasons he was buttermaker in the Meremere dairy factory, and afterward, though still gaining further experience in buttermaking, he specialised in cheese, working successively for the Hawera, Cape Egmont, and Riverdale Companies and the T. L. Joll Company’s Okaiawa branch until 1917. He managed the Okaiawa branch for two seasons, being succeeded by his brother, Mr. O. Crawford, now living in New Plymouth. In 1917 he returned to the big Riverdale factory as manager. It was from Riverdale that he joined the staff of the Dairy Division of the Department of Agriculture as a Dairy Produce Grader at Patea in 1925. In 1928 he was appointed Dairy Instructor (Cheese), with headquarters at New Plymouth, where he remained

until promoted to the position of Superintendent of Cheese Instruction in 1945, working from the Division’s head office in Wellington. Mr. Crawford had a wide knowledge of all matters relating to the manufacture of dairy products, particularly cheese, and to dairy factory management and practice. His outstanding personal characteristics were tact and modest courtesy. These qualities were of special value to the industry through the difficult years of zoning and change-over of supply during the earlier part of the war.