Stay in Gisborne

Te Ao Hou, November 1964, Page 17

Stay in Gisborne After this he was transferred to the Tairawhiti District Office of the Department in Gisborne, where for five years he was Senior Court Clerk, and later, Consolidation Officer. ‘My wife and I enjoyed our stay in Gisborne very much indeed,’ he says, ‘and found them to be very fine people there.’ During this time he took a keen interest in Maori welfare work and education. While he was in Gisborne he enlisted for the Maori Battalion, but was not accepted for overseas service; he did, however, serve for a period on Home Service, being for a year an instructor in the Maori Home Guard Training Corp at Hicks Bay. Mrs Winter was formerly Perle Hera Taiaroa. Both her grandfathers, the Hon. H. K. Taiaroa and the Hon. Tame Parata, were South Island Members of Parliament and Members of the Legislative Council. She is a younger sister of Puhi, the wife of Mr Rangi Royal. Mr and Mrs Frank Winter Mrs Winter, or Perle Taiaroa as she then was, was a pioneer dental nurse, joining the School Dental Service in 1926 shortly after its inception, and serving in New Plymouth from 1928 to 1931. She was the first Maori girl fully to qualify as a dental nurse. In 1947 the Winter family came to Wellington again when Mr Winter was appointed Assistant General Secretary of the New Zealand Public Service Association. Later he was appointed Deputy General Secretary, the position he held before his retirement from the Association last February.