Hastings glider crash: Grant Jarden, 71, remembered for his immense kindness, dedication and humour

Grant Bruce Jarden died in a glider crash in Hastings.

• Grant Bruce Jarden, 71, died in a glider crash near Hastings Aerodrome and Hawke’s Bay Golf Club.
• Jarden has been remembered as kind, community-minded, and involved in many clubs and volunteer organisations throughout Hawke’s Bay.
• He trained new glider pilots, where his humour and dedication to helping others was immeasurable.

A Hastings man who lost his life in a glider crash has been remembered by his family as a volunteering legend and one of the hearts of the flying community in the region.

Grant Bruce Jarden, 71, died on Sunday after the glider he was piloting crashed near the boundary of Hastings Aerodrome and the Hawke’s Bay Golf Club.

Grant trained many young and emerging glider pilots to fly across the region. He was on a solo flight and being towed by a light plane from the Bridge Pā Aerodrome when the glider he was piloting crashed onto the No 10 fairway of the Hawke’s Bay Golf Club course on Valentine Rd.

A witness golfing nearby previously told Hawke’s Bay Today the glider had been above the tow plane and the rope between them almost “vertical” before it came apart.

The glider then went into a steep descent and crashed, the witness said.

The Civil Aviation Authority is investigating.

Grant’s wife of 43 years, Mandy Jarden, said she would remember her husband as a man with a classic and cheeky personality, who would help anybody.

“He said when he went to Sunday School he learned ‘do unto others as you would have them do unto you’, and he always lived by that,” she said.

“That’s why he got involved in so many things.”

Mandy and Grant’s son Olly said there was nobody else quite like him.

“He was [as] silly as a two-bob watch,” said Olly.

Grant was brought up in Wairoa and lived there most of his life, before moving near to Havelock North 25 years ago.

Mandy recalled a story about a friend from England coming to visit the family in Wairoa and Grant went to pick her up from the airport.

“The one passenger gets out of the plane and she goes up to the one person waiting and said to him, ‘You must be Grant’ and he said, ‘Who? What? Grant? No, I don’t know Grant’,” she said.

“That was absolutely typical of what he’d do.”

The family regularly received homestays from France, who worked in exchange for board at their rural property. Grant would cheekily greet the visitors at his gate with a sign that read: “No French allowed”.

“They’d arrive and they’d look at the sign and look at him and you’d see them talking to each other, ‘What kind of a lunatic lives here?‘.

“That’s when I’d have to rush out and say don’t take any notice of him,” laughed Mandy.

The morning before his fatal crash, Grant had been helping at the Pony Club Games at the Hawke’s Bay Equestrian Park where he had been working as caretaker for the last year.

Booking officer at the Equestrian Park, Kristina Mitchell, remembers Grant as “a very jovial, very happy to help man”.

“He was the perfect fit for the place. He did over and above what was required. He just had a heart and a passion for everything he was involved in,” she said.

“Him and his family are just one of a kind. They’re all amazing, helpful, friendly people, and just very special, very unique.”

As part of his role at Gliding Hawke’s Bay and Waipukurau, Grant would train new members how to fly. It was here that he met a young Ryan Maney.

“I went out there one day and he was the first person I met, and from there he was like my person I dealt with literally every weekend for three or four years,” he said.

“I don’t believe you could get any more liked than him.”

A young Ryan Maney being taught how to pilot a glider by Grant Jarden.

Maney, now 23, was 12 when he first started flying with Grant.

“I always remembered when I flew with him he’d test me and he’d always put his feet over my shoulders as I am flying,” Maney said.

“That’s one thing I’ll always remember and he’d say ‘turn left’, and I’d look left and his bloody feet were sitting there in front of me. [He had] a really good sense of humour - just a real joker.

“I remember going up there when I was 12, not knowing much about life in general and I just looked up to him.

“You could almost look up to him as a sort of parent because he taught you to fly a glider by yourself, which – I was one of the youngest in the country to do it at 14.”

In a Hawke’s Bay Today story from July 2015 about Maney and a group of teenagers learning to fly gliders, Grant said he was getting “a lot of satisfaction teaching them”.

“It’s quite mind-blowing. They are picking it up [gliding] a hell of a lot quicker than adults do,” Grant said at the time.

“When I fly with them, I don’t do anything anymore. I am just along for the ride.”

A celebration service of Grant’s life will be held at Equestrian Park on Equestrian Lane on Friday, April 11, 10.30am. Attendees are asked to wear bright clothing or an Aertex shirt or shorts, and to bring their own chair as seating is limited.

Jack Riddell is a multimedia journalist with Hawke’s Bay Today and spent the last 15 years working in radio and media in Auckland, London, Berlin, and Napier. He reports on all stories relevant to residents of the region.