Browny and his wife Toni donated a carved bench for the new boardwalk in Mangonui. My wife and I used to sit and look at the harbour. Losing that bench makes our community poorer, and we share in that disappointment.
A similar thing happened at Kaitaia College.My son Luke wanted to thank the college, so he designed and built a square picnic table, placed by the senior study room. It was a masterful job, so it was chained to a pipe railing. Students would sit around it and chat. The next year, when we returned from summer holiday, the table was gone.
My reaction was for my woodwork classes to build more tables. We built them out of 6x2 so they would be heavier to move. When they were graffitied, we painted them; when vandalised, we repaired them and when taken we replaced them. Seeing the students sitting around our tables was a joy that I would not be denied.
Mother Teresa's poem Do it Anyway was prominently posted in my old woodwork room:
"People are often unreasonable, irrational, and self-centred. Forgive them anyway.
