Decades of service to country recalled

Former Hastings deputy mayor and New Zealand Empire Games team manager Ron Shakespeare died last Saturday.

Mr Shakespeare, who would have turned 95 on September 26, was a Hastings city councillor for 21 years, from 1965 to 1985, including six years as deputy mayor.

He was also involved with every New Zealand Olympic, Empire and Commonwealth Games team from 1950 to 1974, including managing the team at the 1966 British Empire and Commonwealth Games in Kingston, Jamaica.

His service to Hawke's Bay included 14 years on the Hawke's Bay Airport Authority and, having served on the Hastings High Schools Board of Governors, taking a leading roll in establishing the Hawke's Bay Community College, now known as the EIT.

Among legacies of his volunteer work in Hastings are the Opera House, with the Shakespeare Room named in his honour, and the Hastings Baptist Church, built in the 1960s as a result of the efforts of a committee in which he was significantly involved.

But his big interest was swimming. He entered administration as a club secretary as a teenager in 1935 and that led to 24 years of involvement with the Games teams.

Preceding his leading involvement in 1966 were his roles as swimming squad manager at the 1962 Empire Games in Perth, and assistant manager, or Chef de Mission as it is called, of the full games team at the 1964 Olympics in Tokyo.

A highlight of the latter, he had since recalled, was guardianship of the two gold medals won by running great Peter Snell.

Mr Shakespeare served swimming locally and nationally for almost four decades, in almost every capacity possible, and maintained an association with the sport as Hawke's Bay Poverty Bay centre patron to the time of his death.

His involvement in the sport also led to a foundation role in the Waimarama Surf Lifesaving Club.

Born in Havelock North, he lived most of his life in Hastings.

He attended Parkvale School and Hastings High School, which he left at the age of 14 after the 1931 earthquake to help run a family poultry farm.

The following year he began working as a clerk for Hawke's Bay Farmers Meat Co where he remained for 17 years, studying via correspondence before establishing an accountancy partnership, sited firstly in Heretaunga St but later moving to Karamu Rd and then Queen St.

His service to the community culminated in the Governor General presenting him with the Tower Senior Achievers Award in 1997. He was also bestowed life membership of Swimming New Zealand (formerly the New Zealand Amateur Swimming Association), and in 2009 he received a Lifetime Achievement Award, associated with the Halberg Sports Awards.

He was unable to attend the awards, and the presentation was made by Sir Murray Halberg in Napier where Mr Shakespeare was living at Princess Alexandra Retirement Village.

He and wife Elsie, whom he married in 1941 and who died in 1983, are survived by sons Geoffrey, Tony and Michael, four grandchildren and three great-grandchildren. His funeral was to be held at Crestwood, in Heretaunga St, Hastings, at 11am today.