Long time Kaitāia pharmacist and businessman Eric Shackleton is being remembered for his long-standing community work, and sense of humour.
Long time Kaitāia pharmacist and businessman Eric Shackleton is being remembered for his long-standing community work, and sense of humour.
Long time Kaitāia pharmacist and businessman Eric Shackleton has died, with the ‘local legend’ being remembered as a lovely man who was proud of his community and wholly invested in it.
Shackleton died two weeks ago, aged 79, and below are some memories of the man who was involved in so many community organisations, much as told by him to Lois Strong, who recorded his memories as part of the Hospice Life Story programme.
Tēna tātau,
Eric Garvin Shackleton was born on November 2, 1944, in Franklin Memorial Hospital, Waiuku, the second child of Molly and Dick.
Molly, originally from County Derry in Ulster in Ireland, was a nurse and met Dick, a slaughterman-butcher in Waiuku, while working at Kingseat Hospital.
The family travelled to Ireland to visit Molly’s family in 1949 through the Suez Canal. Eric’s first-ever memory was seeing little lighters of Indian men coming to their boat in the Mumbai Harbour.
While they were away the Korean War began so they got stuck in Ireland for longer than expected.
Eric started school at Waiuku District Primary School, making many friends.
In 1958 he went to Mt Albert Grammar, where, again he made friends, and did well academically.
Eric’s chemistry education was put to practical use at home in Waiuku - if you have a good grasp of chemistry, you can make explosives! He and his brother John blew things up in the garden, making small bombs out of copper tubing filled with gunpowder.
Then he made a pistol ... John said Eric fortunately held it up at arm’s length above his head because when it went off, all Eric had left in his hand was the handle, the rest had shot back and would have caused him serious injury.
Long-time Shackleton's Pharmacy owner Eric Shackleton (right) handing over the traditional pharmacist's mortar and pestle to Richard Brown, who has taken over the store and will run it as Brown's Community Pharmacy
In 1963 he went to Petone’s Central Institute of Technology, earning a Diploma of Pharmacy.
After an internship in Manurewa, he took up locum work from Kawakawa to Taumarunui, then in 1967 bought a boat ticket to the United Kingdom, working at Bolingbroke Hospital in Clapham Junction, and later at a pharmacy in Bow, in the East End.
He travelled to Ulster to stay with some of his mother’s family, then to Austria, where he learnt skiing and tobogganing. With a couple of friends he went to Southern Europe for about three months, to France, Italy, Greece, Spain and Portugal.
Back in London, Eric and friend Neville Hill flatted in Primrose Gardens, near Hampstead. He met Liz Combe, who lived nearby. He drove up to Scotland to visit Liz in Findhorn, a New Age Community near Inverness, and ended up staying there and marrying her.
Garvin was born in Scotland in August 1970. Eric was working at a pharmacy in Inverness, to get funds to return home. They saved enough money to buy tickets to return via Italy, India and Australia in a Boeing 707.
Second son Clive was born at Takapuna Hospital in July 1972 and in July 1973 they moved to Kaitāia, for six months. Henry Kiwikiwi of Ōtūru embraced the family, drawing them firmly into the community. Liz liked it so much, and Eric enjoyed the job, so they stayed and bought into the pharmacy.
In 1979, business partner Les Gleave died suddenly, and Eric had to buy out the other 75 per cent of the business.
“We changed banks and bought the business and we seemed to do alright,” Eric said.
Sandra had started working at Arcade Pharmacy for Brian Jones across the road in the same year Eric came to Kaitāia. But it wasn’t till years later, after their divorces, that they bumped into each other in what was Rhys Williams’ Supervalue Supermarket and Eric and his boys got together with Sandra and her son, Stefan, marrying in 1995.
In 1999 Eric stood for Parliament, for the 99MP Party, and was second highest polling in the electorate.
When I interviewed Eric in 2015 for a magazine column I wrote, he told me about his pleasure in wine and all that goes with it, his delight in having turned a bare block of land into the vineyard with its native shelter belts, its first vines planted in 2003. Adding to his already full life, Eric had done a diploma course at the Eastern Institute of Technology in Hastings over three years in viticulture and winemaking. He and Sandra ran a local wine club for a while to introduce people to new varieties of wines.
But the other project, the one that will outlast us all, is the forest they planted down the edge of the Waitapu stream.
“But isn’t this something we’ve done right?”, asked Eric, “you know, we’ve created something out of nothing. We’ve done something for the community and for our own personal satisfaction and it’ll be there forever.”
The five acre bush area is under a QEII Covenant and visible from the main road.
In Kaitāia Eric was involved in so many organisations - the Roundtable, the Masters Street Playcentre committee, got into flying and ham radio, took up scuba diving, became an instructor, a master diver training other instructors.
“I loved the diving. Just loved the weightlessness and the fact that I could see fish and feed an eel...The lack of phone calls. By that time we were working six and seven days a week and you just needed to get away. It was great,” he said.
Flying provided a similar escape from constant responsibilities.
He became a Justice of the Peace (with later training to be court-approved), a marriage celebrant, a trustee for St John, as well as the Switzer Home Trust Board.
Eric said, “Dr Tom Young threatened me with violence if I didn’t take over from him.”
He was chair of Hospice Kaitāia and on the 20/20 Trust for Computers in Homes.
One of the very few things Eric did just for himself, rather than for the community or the greater good, was his family history research, which all grew out of his love for family.
One of the things he was most proud of was the $1000 scholarships given out to a student every year.
He said, “a Māori guy from Ahipara come into the shop one Sunday morning, said he would like to thank me for the scholarship. I said I hope it helped in a small way. He said he did medicine, became a doctor and then decided he didn’t want to do that so he did a MBA and was then in charge of a Ngai Tahu Health Programme for all of the South Island.
“We continued that for over 20 years and thankfully Richard Brown is still keeping it going. I think it’s good, it gives the kids a chance to get out of here. It’s not a lot of money or anything but just a help. When you hear stories like that it makes it worthwhile. It’s a good feeling.”
There is so much to say about this lovely man. He was proud of this community and wholly invested in it. He met everyone at their level, in his eyes everyone was family. He was a man of tremendous empathy and without judgment of others. He read widely, everything from self-help to how to play bridge, languages, science fiction, murder mysteries, adventure and historic biographies. He loved cricket and rugby.
I will always remember Eric with warmth and a smile, for his always-enthusiastic and affectionate greetings, the mad ritual of three cheek kisses, hugs carefully timed not to be inappropriately long – which I always managed to extend – maybe that was his plan. He always made me laugh and I never left him without feeling uplifted, like I was the most important person in town. I bet that’s how everyone felt after an Eric Encounter.
Eric is survived by Sandra, Garvin and his wife Robyn and their three children, Abigail, Liam and Ethan; Clive and his wife Merche and children Tane and Olivia; his bonus son Stefan and his wife Lisa and their children Tyla and Ashton, and Stefan’s first family, Roseann, Ricky and Joey.
