Te Awamutu’s latest centenarian recalls a life well lived

Ray Toomath in his beloved 1951 MGTD sports car circa 1952. Photo / Supplied

Today marks the 100th birthday of Ray Toomath - a Te Awamutu resident for 63 years until a recent shift to Auckland for care.

He celebrates his milestone this Saturday with family and friends.

Ray will be remembered by many in Te Awamutu as an accountant, with a love of cars and golf. But accounting was his father’s choice of career and had it not been for the war and illness, Ray may have been able to pursue his love of the sciences and a career in that field.

100-year-old Ray Toomath. Photo / Dean Taylor

Talking to Ray at his care home on Saturday, it is clear he has lost none of his mental ability or wit.

“I can say I was good at accounting. I knew all the laws and was conscientious,” he says.

“But I think it was a bit like being a parasite. I didn’t really produce anything.

“I would have been happier as a scientist.

“I’m really keen on geology and would have liked to have been a volcanologist.”

He thought it might be a bit late now for a new career.

But talk to Ray about his business, and it is clear he was more than an accountant that did tax returns.

In fact, we will see his sharp thinking and early adoption of technology helped develop accounting practices that helped many businesspeople and could be described as highly productive. More on that later.

Born in Wellington on August 10, 1923, Ray and his family moved to Petone when he was a year old and he attended primary school there. He started his secondary schooling at Hutt Valley High School in 1937 - a year late due to the polio epidemic.

Ray Toomath growing up in Petone and developing his love of "wheels".

Ray left school at the end of 1940 and started work as a clerk at the local paint factory - a job his father had secured.

Work at that time was precious, and Ray embraced it, but he was also attending night school classes in accounting.

Like many young men, he was called up for military service in 1942 and entered the army at Trentham, earning the princely sum of seven shillings (70 cents) per day.

At the beginning of 1943, he was transferred to the Featherston Prisoner of War (POW) Camp.

It had been a military camp for training soldiers in World War 1. During World War II, at the request of the United States, it was re-established as a POW camp, opening in September 1942.

Prisoners were made up of Koreans and members of forced labour units who had been working at Guadalcanal and members of the Imperial Japanese Army and Navy, including airmen from both forces, captured in the Pacific.

There was a total of 868 prisoners.

It is recorded that the men posted there were either too young, too old or had medical conditions that meant they could not serve overseas.

They were only given a vague idea of what the role was and were not trained in how to deal with prisoners of war.

Ray managed to get a clerical job when he let it be known he could type, a skill he had been taught in his youth.

He had only been there a month when the most infamous incident took place, although he didn’t witness it.

Over 200 Japanese prisoners were protesting and refusing to work.

The report states warning shots were fired and the Japanese responded by throwing rocks.

The guards opened fire with live rounds, resulting in 31 Japanese fatalities at the camp and another 17 deaths in hospital from wounds. One New Zealand private also died after being hit by a ricochet.

While Ray didn’t witness the awful event, because he had a clerical role his typed report describing the event and deaths is the official record in the Turnbull Library.

The incident was kept under wraps for a number of years.

Cherry trees at the World War II Featherston POW Camp memorial. Photo / Mike Dickison

In 1943 it was determined that the threat of Japanese invasion was low and those under the age of 20, like Ray, were discharged.

He returned to Wellington and began work as a junior clerk with an accounting firm.

He also made the call to join the Royal New Zealand Air Force, rather than risk being called back into the army.

“I liked the idea of flying,” he says.

“It was exciting.”

Ray trained at Delta Camp in Blenheim and was chosen to train as a navigator.

Ray trained at New Plymouth, flying in Avro Ansons. Photo / Gavin Conroy

He trained at New Plymouth, flying in Avro Ansons, which were already obsolete.

“I loved flying and I was good at navigation,” he says.

“We did most of our training over the ocean, so it was ‘dead reckoning’ - a real skill.”

Ray went on to top his class, with a 96 per cent mark, and planned to continue flying.

Unfortunately, he and another trainee contracted tuberculosis. He was diagnosed at the end of his training and grounded from that time onwards.

In 1943 Ray was admitted to New Plymouth Hospital and it was to be 10 years before he was cleared of the disease.

Over that time his life was brought to a grinding halt on several occasions by X-ray evidence of a recurrence.

Determined to fly, Ray trained as a private pilot in a Tiger Moth but was prevented from going solo by a dud X-ray.

He continued to train as an accountant, and in 1948 he qualified. It had taken eight years of part-time study.

Ray and mate Jim Wisheart, a Wairoa-born school teacher, changing a wheel on their 1946 Austin 8 on a 1949 trip from the bottom to the top of the North Island and back.

By 1953 he had an accounting practice in Wairoa, but once again he had to put his life and work on hold to be admitted to Waipukurau Hospital for the disfiguring and terrifying treatment of thoracoplasty - a procedure to permanently collapse tuberculous cavities in the lungs.

It was following the second thoracoplasty operation and recuperating in Pukeora sanitarium that he met trainee nurse Gillian Cole.

They became engaged and married in October 1954.

At the time Ray was the chief accountant at Putāruru Timberyards.

The couple remained in Putāruru until 1957 and had the first two of their three children, Robyn and Michael.

Ray was a member of the Putāruru Jaycees and had visited the Te Awamutu chapter and liked the look of the town, which gave him the idea of shifting and starting his own business.

“Working for one company was restrictive,” he says.

“I only dealt with a handful of other people and businesses and I wanted more variety.”

Moving to Te Awamutu, the Toomaths purchased a house in Rewi Street for £3900 (roughly $7800) and Ray partnered with H.M.G. Barnett and took over the accounting practice of E.C. Riley.

In 1960, the couple’s third child, Simon, was born.

Ray put his own name to his business in 1962, opening the accounting practice of de Latour and Toomath. Over subsequent years they were joined by Norman Martin, Rodney Spiers and Al Oliver.

His affinity with technology came to the fore and the practice was the first business in Te Awamutu to install a computer.

He was on an accounting research committee for 19 years and worked with Australian accounting software pioneer David Hartley to change the face of accounting.

“Accountants used to just do tax returns, but we were able to offer clients more services,” says Ray.

These new services included cashflow reports and true economic profit/loss reports that helped businesspeople make plans and decisions.

“This was quite a change in the industry,” says Ray.

It also made basic jobs a lot more efficient.

“We used to employ up to 30 staff at tax time just to transfer information from client’s cheque stubs to forms.

“Computers made that tedious job much easier.”

Ray also enjoyed technology in everyday life and was an early adopter, so now, even at 100, he splits his time between streaming his favourite content on TVNZ+, Sky TV and YouTube.

He reads on his Kindle, listens to audiobooks on Libby and connects his hearing aids to his iPad and digital TV via Bluetooth.

Ray also enjoyed a number of hobbies, especially golf and contract bridge.

“I joined a number of different clubs and organisations and, being an accountant, always ended up as treasurer,” he says.

“I didn’t mind because it was a way I could contribute and make sure the finances were in good shape.”

The Toomath family sold their Rewi St home in 1967 for £7800 (about $15,600) and purchased a home in Bank St for £10,000 ($20,000).

Ray and Gillian’s marriage had not been ideal and in 1972 the couple separated.

Ray’s match-making friends Bruce and Elsie Russell introduced him to Moria Fitzsimmons in 1973 and in 1975 they married.

Moria was a widow and mother of David, Jenny, Ross and Malcolm.

She ran what had been her family farm on Wyllie’s Hill, Te Kawa West, and had her own pedigree Jersey herd, Puhinui Stud.

Ray says meeting Moira was the happiest day of his life.

“She lost her car keys at the Russells so I offered to drive her home,” says Ray.

“We got talking and hit it off straight away.”

Ray moved to the farm and says those were great days.

“Country life was different,” he says.

“Everyone got together and socialised and made their own fun.

“Our blended families also got on so it was a very happy time.”

Ray said it totally changed him and brought him out of his shell.

He described his own family life as happy enough, but unexciting.

“This was different.”

Ray helped start a bridge club at Kōrakonui, played tennis, got involved with a walking group, which included weekend away adventures, and played piano accordion for a local singing group.

He also had a New Zealand Symphony Orchestra subscription for decades and loved the concerts at Hamilton’s Founders Theatre.

In 1985, Moria sold her herd and a year later Ray retired from his practice but retained some clients.

In 1990, they moved to Turere Lane. They had been on one overseas trip in 1983, but from 1987 until 2000, travel became a passion and they explored the world extensively.

Switzerland was Ray’s favourite destination and they visited three times.

He was attracted to how clean and orderly the country was and the extensive rail network that always ran on time.

In 1997 Moria was diagnosed with lymphoma and treated with chemotherapy. She was well for almost 10 years, but it recurred in 2006 and she died in March 2007.

Ray managed better than he might have thought living alone and was able to keep up his hobbies and interests.

He played his last round of 18 holes of golf in 2012 aged 89, but continued to play nine holes into his 90s.

His love of cars and driving came to an end in February 2021 at age 97 when he had a stroke, affecting his left side.

The stroke didn’t affect his brain, but he was less mobile and with a lack of care space in Te Awamutu, he moved to Selwyn Village in Auckland where Robyn is able to visit frequently from Waiheke Island.

He didn’t sell his last car though.

He had grown a fondness for Peugeots after owning a few, and was driving a 1999 Peugeot 406, his first car with air conditioning, and gave the car to Robyn to drive when she was in the city.

But it was his 1951 MGTD sports car he drove in the 1950s that was the favourite of the 14 cars he owned.

And before he had his stroke, for his 96th birthday he was taken to Tauranga’s Classic Flyers Aviation Museum at Mount Maunganui and was surprised with a flight with former RNZAF and Air New Zealand pilot Keith Adair in his 1976 PAC CT4B Air Trainer (built by Pacific Aerospace near Hamilton Airport), proving you are never too old to do a loop-de-loop.

Dean Taylor is the editor of the Te Awamutu Courier and a community reporter with 35 years of experience.