Family focus fixed on finding long-lost love child

Fay Partridge (left) is trying to find the child of her uncle Les Maynard (right). Photo / Herald on Sunday, Supplied

An Auckland woman is going public to try to unlock a 60-year family mystery: where is her dead uncle's love child?

J Force soldier Les Maynard died accidentally after returning from Japan in 1947. But before he died he fathered a daughter and his family is trying to find her.

Fay Partridge, who is leading the cause, assumes her long-lost cousin would be about 60. One of Partridge's children is adopted and recently found his natural brother. That had re-ignited the hunt for her cousin.

"It meant so much to him. I thought maybe the girl would have loved to know her dad - everyone has a right to know."

Partridge and her family were keen to meet their mystery relative. "They'd love to make contact with her. But they don't know when exactly Les fathered the child. That's the mystery: whether it was before or after the war (World War II)."

Maynard had returned from a post-war clean-up mission in 1947 to his father's farm in Kohukohu, Hokianga, helping to clear land by hand. That year he died in a horse-and-cart accident.

"The horses bolted. The axle went over his head and crushed him. He broke his back and his neck," said Partridge.

Maynard died unmarried at 22 and had been unaware he had a daughter.

Years later, his sister Mavis Nixon received a late-night phone call. A woman - who the family believed was Maynard's former girlfriend - said Maynard had fathered a daughter, but gave no details. The family does not know the name of the woman or the daughter.

But Maynard had worked at Kiwi Bacon in Kingsland as a butcher before going to Japan in 1945. "A guy who worked at the Kiwi Bacon factory lived next door to the family where this woman lived." He knew her name, but had not been found.

Maynard's surviving brother and sisters, who are in their 70s and 80s, would like to find her and meet her.