Gallipoli veteran's widow still inspires

SO MUCH TO DO: Rangi Briggs' achievements are impressive and she is still "having a good life". PHOTO/STEPHEN PARKER

COULD Rotorua's Rangi Briggs be this country's last surviving widow of a New Zealand Gallipoli veteran?

We're reluctant to definitively claim she is, but it's far more possible than probable.

Our People's compiler has had the privilege of knowing Rangi (more correctly Rangiuira meaning sky and lightning) for four decades, but there's not been an inkling of such a historic link.

There's a reason for that: like so many Anzacs, her late husband, Fred Briggs, a sergeant in the Auckland Infantry Regiment, never talked of his time in the trenches. Rangi has no knowledge of where he served after Gallipoli, but his discharge papers, ferreted out by daughter Maria Gower, indicate his service to king and country was a remarkable four years, 50 days, a mere three weeks less than the war's length.

Fascinating as this peep into her husband's soldiering past is, it's Rangi Our People's zooming in on.

Our sights have been set on her for many a moon, but until now she's politely declined to be profiled. Rangi does everything politely, but our persistence has paid off. Not only did she capitulate, she summoned us back, fearing she'd neglected to tell us "this or that".

There's a lot of "this and that" to tell and what Rangi hasn't, her daughters, Maria and Pattie Sutton, have. They and their two brothers, Fred and Richard (both Australia-based), have every reason to be proud of this dignified 95-year-old whose credentials are chocker with achievements.

This isn't idle chat on our part - the QSM she was awarded for services to her community and Maoridom confirms it.

Rangi's been a leader in Interflora's international arena, a two-term district councillor, member of the former Rotorua Area Electricity authority (RAEA) and interim trustee of the Rotorua Electricity Trust (RECT) that grew from its devolution.

There's more, far more. She was the city's first woman president of the Justice of the Peace Association, charter member and former president of the Rotorua branch of the international service organisation Zonta, a marriage celebrant, held lead roles on a multiplicity of Maori trusts and, with the late Bishop Manu Bennett, was hand-picked as an iwi allocations advisor to the Fisheries Commission.

It's a list that's impressive by anyone's measure - the more so because this Murupara-born taonga (treasure) didn't speak English until she was introduced to it at Rangatahi School.

Rangi's early years were spent on a block overlooking what's now Murupara township.

"I had a wonderful childhood, fishing, eeling, catching koura with fern fronds, riding horses, hiding up my parents' cherry trees." Those cherries nearly brought Rangi's life to a premature close. "I'd been up a tree watching men building the road below, felt hungry and just as I climbed down there was this almighty blast, they'd detonated gelignite right under the tree I'd climbed."

Her first job out of Napier's Hukarere College was a trainee teacher - these were the days before teachers' colleges; Rangi learned on the job, first at Matapihi then Matakana Island.

"It was such a lovely place, I had to walk a couple of miles over the hills to school but, on wet days, the farmer I boarded with lent me a horse, it was a bit wild, tended to take off on me, I'd have to head it into the sea to put its brakes on."

Rangi joined her parents in Rotorua after her only sibling, Hohepa, was killed at El Alamein.

"He enlisted in the Maori Battalion at 15, he lied about his age, he was dead before he was 18." By then, her family were cultivating vegetables on several acres bordering Lake Rd.

Rangi met husband-to-be Fred when she went to work in his Hinemoa St electrical shop; the building still carries the Briggs name.

"He was a lovely, kind man, always encouraging me to do what he thought I'd be good at. When the shop next door became vacant, he said 'you're always mucking around with flowers, why don't you become a florist?' I thought 'why not?'." Totally self-taught, she was soon an Interflora board member for the Pacific region.

Rangi's Interflora conference parties were uniquely Rotorua. "I'd invite delegates home for a hangi, the town's other two florists, Ngaire Hooper and Natalie Snowball, helped; we'd make rourou [flax food baskets], dress in piupiu and serve fruit salad from a decorated wheelbarrow. They were huge hits."

Guests' glasses were kept well filled although Rangi was no drinker; as a youngster she'd joined the Temperance Society. "When I started going out with Fred, he offered me a ginger beer and I said, 'Idon't drink alcohol', I hadn't a clue. The first time I tasted wine was at a floristry conference, it was too much for me, I had to go to bed."

In 1980, fellow business owners urged Rangi to stand for the first elected district council. She romped in.

Building the Aquatic Centre was a hot agenda topic, hotter still was the drive to keep sewage out of the lake and Kaituna River. Rangi successfully advocated for land disposal. "I saw it working in Asia, said we needed to do that here."

She's travelled extensively.

Impressive as her achievements have been, it's Rangi's distinctive 1971 Holden Monaro LS (luxury sports) many will associate her with. "Young guys used to follow me home wanting to buy it." She resisted; it remains in the family, albeit across the Tasman where son Fred's preserving it.

Family are her lynchpin and, like her, high achievers. Take her grandsons: Sam Sutton's three times world extreme kayaking champ, his brother, Jamie, a gold medal rafter. "They make me very proud ... I was going to say 'I've had a good life' but scrub that and put 'I am still having a good life'."