Our People: Alwyn Henderson's 'scandalous' life

Alwyn Henderson. Photo/Stephen Parker

There are those who rue the passing of what they insist were 'the good old days'. Or were they?

For some the rigid conventions of earlier times didn't necessarily equate to the happiest of times.

Alwyn Henderson was among those socially condemned because of one seven letter word - 'divorce'.

The recently minted nonagenarian was a product of a time in which it was considered scandalous for a woman to live with a man, let alone have his children before they married.

If this publication were a tabloid or women's magazine we'd say she's bravely spoken of what obviously remains painful; it's not but, blow it, we'll say it anyway.

Flouting convention and wearing the full force of public vilifications is what's made Alwyn the gutsy, steel magnolia of a woman we meet today.

"Jack [Henderson] and I lived together at a time it was not socially acceptable . . . we had bricks thrown at the house . . . I was considered a scarlet woman . . . today our daughters would be described as love children, then they were called bastards, I lost custody of my legitimate children."

The fact that both had previous marriage partners compounded their "unholy state".

Despite what should have been their eventual happy-ever-after marriage, Alwyn's is a love story with a tragic postscript. Within a year of becoming a legal wife she was a widow.

But this wasn't where our conversation started - it was with something much more mundane - a paper clip.

We'd barely sat down when she demonstrates the right way to use one . . . it's with the flat side facing forward.

Alwyn acquired her impressive know-how on her first day at the Christchurch commercial college her father sent her to learn skills useful to a young woman of the 1940s - shorthand, typing and book-keeping.

She was working at the Canterbury Education Board when a friend introduced her to her first husband, Bob Pearson. He'd spent the war years in the navy and was on "one of those victory things" around New Zealand when they met.

Ponder this, children of the email age.

When Bob returned to his Hamilton home forests were felled for the notepaper they chewed through writing to each other for a year. "Toll calls were too darn expensive, too right they were."

When they married Bob's father directed them to Rotorua to expand the family's beekeeping business.

"Rotorua was still little, very, very dusty from the pumice streets, Fenton St didn't exist, it was the unsealed Whaka Rd, there was no Rerewhakaiitu, we'd move hives around the one farm out there."

The couple built on the outskirts of Ngongotaha.

"We had four children quickly, no car, just the work truck so I'd be pushing a pushchair with one hand, a pram with the other, trundling them into Ngongotaha, a busy little spot then."

When she and Jack Henderson became, to use today's terminology, "an item" they bought the historic kauri villa Alwyn admired. Built in Auckland in the 1890s it was moved to Rotorua in the 1920s where its two stories were separated but remain side-by-side.

"At one stage Jack bought the one next door, he said that was my engagement ring."

The original upper floor's been Alwyn's home for six decades. She and Jack married there. Talk of her wedding day produces another insight into the fallout from their divorces.

"No Anglican clergy would marry us, the Presbyterian minister from Ngongotaha said he would but didn't turn up." His absence wasn't the feared boycott.

"Jack rang, asked where he was, he was out in his garden, had got the time wrong."

Finding herself widowed so soon after marriage Alwyn needed work.

"I had two little children, the youngest was 3, I decided I'd better get some qualifications, freshen up my typing."

The National Bank (now the Fenton St ANZ) employed her, Alwyn was consigned to handling "stink money". Our People's imagination shoots into overdrive translating that as some form of money laundering - the truth's much more prosaic.

"We'd sort out the scruffy, dirty notes, do them up in boxes, go to the Post Office and send them to the Reserve Bank; security depended on the amount, if it was less than $1000 we'd carry it by ourselves, imagine doing that today when even the security vans get robbed."

Alwyn was forced to withdraw from two decades in banking when she turned 60, the organisation's non-negotiable retirement age. "If I'd known I'd have put my birth date back five years when I joined."

Sixty she may have been but Alwyn was nowhere near ready to quit work, moving to the less age-conscious statistics department. Collecting families' spending data was an occupation tailor-made for that gritty determination and dry wit of hers.

"I looked pretty official with a clipboard which meant a lot of doors were slammed in my face". Regardless, it was work that was fertile ground for the "believe it or not" files.

"One day I was diligently knocking on a door, could hear a muffled voice in the distance, thinking someone crippled was inside I went into the bedroom, saw a knife wedged into a wardrobe door, I yanked it free and out popped a boy of about 7 or 8, he looked quite unfazed, it was obviously not the first time he'd been stuck in there, left home alone."

Alwyn worked into her 70s. She's been an ACC night typist, doctors' surgery receptionist and one of those dreaded telephone cold callers. She continues to do phone work for the Citizens Advice Bureau.

Her wide-ranging voluntary work was recognised in 2009 when this newspaper named her one of the city's unsung heroes.

For those wanting irrefutable evidence of the quantum change in attitudes to divorce, Alwyn's 90th birthday provided it.

From being virtually friendless in the 1950s and '60s more than 100 celebrated with her.

"It was pretty astonishing, when I was going through the divorce stuff you were amazed when someone held out the hand of friendship because so many turned against you."

ALWYN HENDERSON
Born: Christchurch, 1927.
Education: Beckham Primary, St Margaret's College.
Family: Three sons, three daughters, eight grandchildren, one great grandchild.
Interests: Family, gardening "It's not an interest, it's a necessity." Treasurer Westbrook Garden Circle for 20 years. "I've always had projects, went to night classes in lead lighting, woodwork." Bakes, quilts and paints. "I call it folk art." Citizens Advice Bureau volunteer, museum docent (guide), Neighbourhood Watch co-ordinator. Collecting "everything, I can't throw stuff away". "Come 5pm I enjoy a gin."
Personal philosophy: "Wake up in the morning and give thanks for being alive."