DEATHS
IN THE FAMILY by Murray
Horton
Peace Researcher 34 – July 2007
ABC expresses our condolences to Kate Dewes, a
longstanding member and world renowned peace campaigner for decades, for the
2007 death of her father, Harry Dewes, aged 87, in Hamilton. Kate wrote this tribute for Peace
Researcher. “In a recent obituary in the Waikato Times, my father Harry Dewes
was described as ‘New
Zealand’s foremost practicing veterinarian
who dealt to it with eyes open, every sense alert, and brain on turbo-charge. He
was a lateral thinker and often a mile in front finding solutions to animal
health problems …such as discovering trace element deficiencies, especially
selenium and copper … and a foremost authority on the impact of electrical
leakages on dairy farms’.
“To his family he was a man of vision and
integrity who encouraged his six daughters and two sons to pursue careers for
the betterment of human - and animal - kind.
For many years however, he could not understand my passion for protest and
peace, especially the early Peace Squadron actions in the mid 1970s. This
changed in 1986 when I was called ‘a communist’ by Stanley Newman, one of the
speakers at a Concerned Parents Association rally in Hamilton, during the Defence Review debate.
He described my peace education work as ‘the Trojan horse of the Labour
government’ and called for the anti-nuclear policy to be overturned so that New Zealand
could return to ANZUS. Dad sprang to my defence in front of a crowd of 2,000,
publicly claiming me as one of his daughters - although I had a different
surname at the time. He described me as a ‘pig dog at a gate’ with strong
ideals and beliefs who had a right to defend myself against such accusations.
This cost him friendships amongst some of the conservative farming and academic
community; but it forged a close relationship with me over the next 30 years.
At his funeral in February 2007 I was heartened to hear the former Dean of the Vet School
describe him to my youngest veterinary sister as the ‘hippy’ of the profession.
Maybe he had more influence on my peace work than he ever imagined!”
And ABC expresses our condolences to our
members Ann and Bill Rosenberg for the 2007 death of her husband and his
father, Wolfgang Rosenberg, aged 92, in Christchurch.
Wolf was on our mailing list in the final years of his life and was involved in
peace work, nationally and internationally, for decades. But he was first and
foremost known as a progressive economist and socialist throughout the 70 years
of his life that he lived in NZ (he arrived here as a 22 year old German Jew
escaping the Nazis). Murray Horton’s lengthy and detailed obituary of Wolf is
in Foreign Control Watchdog 114, May 2007, which can be read online at http://www.converge.org.nz/watchdog/14/04.htm.