Veteran community champion and former New Zealander of the Year Community Hero award winner Jim Morunga was today farewelled by a crowd of over 400 at a tangi on the Napier marae he helped establish a decade ago.
Mr Morunga, 69, died on Friday. His casket rested that night at the family home in Masefield Ave, and on Saturday morning he was carried on to Pukemokimoki Marae which was built in a million-dollar project he spearheaded as chairman of the Maraenui Marae Establishment Trust.
The eulogy was delivered by lecturer, historian and researcher Colin Knox, a former Wellington City Council senior executive who had known Mr Morunga for almost 40 years.
Dr Knox told of a man who grew-up on family land at Awamate, near Wairoa, intending to become a farmer, but who through the twists of fate which rendered him blind by his early 20s became one of the country's more innovative workers for social change and opportunities for young people, with a focus on young Maori and on Maraenui, where he was also foremost in establishing the Maraenui Rugby Club (now Maraenui Rugby and Sports Association) and the Maraenui Community Trust.
It started with a Friendly Action Group formed in Maraenui in the early 1970s with Mr Morunga as its leader, supported by the YMCA and the Hawke's Bay Community College (now the EIT).