Garth George: A feast of remembrance for Sir Howard

The weather forecast for Rotorua for Tuesday was for showers in the morning turning to rain. But the sun broke out early - and stayed out until after Sir Howard Morrison's body was laid to rest.

If he'd been able, he would no doubt have claimed the credit.

Sir Howard's obsequies - his tangihanga and funeral spread over five days - provided an astonishing celebration.

As one Te Arawa kaumatua (elder) observed to me at the tangi last Sunday afternoon, he had never seen so many Pakeha on a marae to pay their respects.

Sir Howard would have been chuffed at that, for like no other Maori before him, he bestrode the racial divide we would like to think does not exist - as much admired by Pakeha, Pacifika and others as he was by his own people.

That was not always so. In the early 1970s, when the unforgettable Howard Morrison Quartet was the talk of the land, I heard him denigrated by some of his own people here in Rotorua as a "White Maori".

But his life belied that. For all his national and international fame and presumed wealth, Rotorua remained his home.

He lived and died in an unremarkable house in the cluttered Ohinemutu village, close to Te Arawa's central marae and its prestigious Tamatekapua meeting house, and devoted most of his time in his latter years on behalf of his people.

He unashamedly used his mana to get what he wanted. As Deputy Prime Minister Bill English noted in a Maori Television interview during the funeral, he didn't just knock on the doors of power in Wellington, he simply opened them and walked in.

(Incidentally, Maori Television's comprehensive, serious and sensitive coverage of the tangi and funeral was superb - a real credit to the channel and all involved.) The great and the good flocked to Ohinemutu from all over New Zealand and overseas to witness the wonderful way that Maori honour and celebrate the passing of a loved one, but it was the ordinary people in the "backroom", as it were, of the marae who impressed me most.

Scores of family members - Morrisons, Tapsells, Grants, Mitchells, Maxwells and others - turned up unasked to do what needed to be done, the organising and catering that a tangihanga requires.

Many took time off work and other family duties to put in long hours on the marae each day, simply to ensure that the thousands of guests were honoured and fed.

There is a Maori proverb which says, "Nau te rourou, naku to rourou, ka ora te manuhiri" - "Your food basket and my food basket will satisfy the guests". That was certainly true of this tangi.

Over the five days between 5000 and 6000 meals were served in the wharekai (dining room) adjoining the meeting house, several times a day and hundreds at a time.

Forty-odd ringawera (kitchen hands), assisted by an Army catering unit, prepared the food, served it, cleared away and washed the dishes.

They served half a tonne of potatoes and kumara, 400kg of carrots, a couple of jumbo bins of pumpkin, half a tonne of lamb, beef and pork, 200kg of fish, 10 large tins a day of steamed pudding, gallons of custard, 10 crates of milk a day and three of cream.

Then there were kilograms of tea and coffee, sandwiches, biscuits and fruit.

They don't serve snacks at tangi. My meal consisted of lamb, potatoes, carrots, coleslaw and beetroot, followed by that magnificent steamed pud with custard, of which I was fortunate to get two helpings since one of my tablemates didn't want his.

Some of the senior ringawera, who hold an honoured place in the whanau, arrived at the marae at 5am each day to begin preparing breakfast, and were still at their posts late into the night.

Then there were the Maori wardens who spent hours on their feet each day assisting visitors, the female relatives and kuia (elder women) who kept permanent vigil around the coffin, the kaumatua who listened to hours and hours of oratory, and many other whanau members who ensured all went according to protocol and the dignity of the occasion.

I came away thinking that these Maori folk really know how to give a bloke a send-off. It makes even the timeless splendour of a Requiem Mass look rather insipid.

Wellington columnist Rosemary McLeod recalled last weekend that she once called Sir Howard "Old Brown Eyes" - New Zealand's Frank Sinatra. As an entertainer he was all of that; as a man he stood head and shoulders above the American.

There is another Maori proverb which says, "Hinga ana he teeteekura, ara mai ano he teetekura" - "As one fern frond dies, another takes its place".

But it doesn't apply to Sir Howard Leslie Morrison. He was a one-off; we will not see his like again.