Manawatu mourns man of many layers
He was head prefect, and cricket and First XV captain.
A taste of work in a law office, and admiration of fictional legal attorney Perry Mason, prompted him to study law at Auckland University. He graduated in 1968 and married his first wife, Pauline. Eldest daughter Natalie was born in 1969, and in 1972, the couple decided to get out of Auckland to raise their family somewhere smaller.
Sunderland was employed by law firm Rowe O’sullivan and became a partner in 1974, before a merger that created Rowe Mcbride, and later, Fitzherbert Rowe.
He became chairman of the Manawatu Centre of the Cancer Society in 1976, a position he held for 10 years
He was selected by what was then the Palmerston North Hospital Board to chair a committee and write a report about the need for a hospice.
While the Cancer Society was lukewarm on the hospice plan, Sunderland’s conclusions about the demand for a centre for terminal care, coloured by his own experience of Pauline’s illness and death from cancer in 1984, was a deal breaker.
He was adamant that if the board did not move, the groundswell of community support would see a hospice created anyway.
He became a hospice trustee and was encouraged to stand for the hospital board. In 1986, after a district court recount, he was elected for a three-year term. After that, he maintained an interest in health through membership of the now defunct Manawatu Whanganui regional medical ethics committee between 2002 and 2006.
In 2009, Sunderland was recalled to the health boardroom as one of then Health Minister Tony Ryall’s appointments to the Midcentral District Health Board.
A year later, he was appointed chairman of the board, at the same time being the deputy chairman of the neighbouring Whanganui District Health Board.
Law firm partner Charles Andrews said despite Sunderland’s public achievements, it was his family that mattered most. ‘‘Although his work in the profession and in health gave him great satisfaction, what really ultimately satisfied him and gave him rest was his family.’’