Highly valued in legal circles
FORMER Otago District Law Society secretary Katherine Dolby was highly valued by members of the legal profession, both for her knowledge and her loyalty in that role from 1976 until 1994.
Known to most as Katherine, or sometimes Miss or Mrs Dolby, she knew everyone, where everything was and how everything worked — important skills for the position, which also involved a role as librarian from 1980 to 1986.
Katherine is remembered by Law Society members as pleasant and helpful, both to members of the legal profession and members of the public, whose queries she would regularly have to field.
‘‘She had a lovely manner and was very good at talking with people,’’ a former Law Society president, David More, said.
Tony Devereux, president in 1989, recalled Katherine as ‘‘a lovely lady’’.
‘‘She was very good with the students who had completed their law degree but didn’t know what they had to do to be admitted. She would show them all the forms they had to fill in, show them around and generally help them.’’
And 1986 president Peter Chin said ‘‘Mrs Dolby would do her utmost to help anyone’’.
For much of her 18 years with the society she worked on her own, in a small office adjacent to the old Law Library. Parttime assistants were engaged as the work demands grew, and daughter Jenny and son David — and sometimes their school friends — would also help out with monthly newsletter mailings, setting up a production line of paper folding, filling, addressing and franking multiple envelopes, all under the careful eye of Katherine.
Jenny was also employed to help out with some of the bookkeeping, updating legal volumes and preserving the leather bindings of the old books, as a way of helping her with university costs.
Law Commissioner and University of Otago Associate Prof Donna Buckingham was a young law student when she first came into contact with Katherine.
‘‘I was amazed at the number of different tasks she had to handle as secretary, from fielding public concerns to doing the accounts.
‘‘But having been a solo mother for a while, she was very independent.’’
Prof Buckingham described Ms Dolby as ‘‘a very nurturing person — highly educated, very interested in her job and very interested in the law’’.
‘‘I think she and former High Court registrar Kinney Curran were the only two nonlawyers to have a Sid Scales cartoon portrait hanging in the robing room.’’
Katherine Charlotte Dolby died peacefully in Dunedin on March 22, two months after her 80th birthday.
Born in Palmerston North on January 18, 1938, she was the oldest of two children of Dr Richard Dolby and his wife, Leslie Katherine Dolby (nee Reece).
Her father, the son of a former Taranaki Herald editor G. H. Dolby, was a distinguished research scientist who received his PhD at Kings College Cambridge. He worked as a chemist at the Dairy Research Institute where, as part of the war effort in relation to the export of dairy products from New Zealand, his research involved the study of casein as it affected the hardness of butter and cheese.
Katherine’s mother was a child welfare officer and very involved in the Palmerston North dramatic society.
After her primary and secondary school education in Palmerston North, Katherine began studying home science at the University of Otago in Dunedin before switching to zoology, in which she obtained a bachelor of science degree.
She later taught science at St Hilda’s College before returning to Palmerston North where she married Ross Grimmett, a lecturer in chemistry at Massey.
They had two children, Jenny, born in 1964 and David in 1966. The family returned to Dunedin in 1967 when their father took up an appointment at the University of Otago. And they spent a year in England in 1971 when Dr Grimmett was on sabbatical at Exeter University.
Back in Dunedin, Katherine continued teaching on a relieving basis.
Son David recalls her mentioning an Otago Boys’ High School science or biology class which involved crayfish dissection — ‘‘followed by boiling and eating’’.
She also taught at Kaikorai Valley High School, Taieri High, St Dominic’s, King Edward Technical College and, in the mid1970s, at Logan Park High School, where she was involved in remedial reading. Katherine went on to teach remedial reading to adult students from home.
In 1976, she began her role at the Otago District Law Society.
She was very supportive of Owls (Otago Women Lawyers Society) when it was formed in 1986, founding member Prof Buckingham recalls.
‘‘We had a very happy relationship and would discuss all sorts of things. I drove her to her second wedding, at St Paul’s in the Octagon. She was a gentle, kind, smart and funny woman.’’
Katherine and her first husband divorced in 1978 and, eight years later, she married David McKenzie.
Prof McKenzie was a member of the original working party that set up U3A in Dunedin in 1993 and Katherine became actively involved in the organisation. When an alternative arrangement had to be found to the administration of course fees, the recently retired secretary of the Otago District Law Society suggested U3A Dunedin approach Steve Rodgers, of Rodgers and Associates (later Rodgers Law and now Wilkinson Rodgers) to deal with its finances. And she offered to provide some secretarial services herself.
From 1995 to 2002, as well as being a member of the Dunedin U3A Committee, Katherine was also a board member and treasurer.
In April 2002 she wrote to 16 members living in Mosgiel, asking for their help in forming a U3A there. A preliminary meeting was held at Chatsford on June 12, 2002 when about 50 people from outside the village showed interest. A Mosgiel U3A was subsequently set up.
As a mark of the significant role she and her husband had played, particularly during U3A’s formative period, they were two of four members to have honorary life membership bestowed on them in 2014, the 20th anniversary of U3A Dunedin.
A member of the Otago Art Society, Katherine regularly attended gatherings at the Dunedin Public Art Gallery. And she loved spending holidays in the Ida Valley, staying at an old farmhouse and visiting the nearby old Ida Valley Railway Hotel. There she enjoyed collectively prepared meals and social gatherings around the coal range in the historic kitchen and dining room with artist friends and lovers of art and good food.
During her marriage to Prof McKenzie, Katherine established a wonderful garden at their Cannington Rd property.
She loved to host visitors to the garden and would wander around it with them, naming all of the roses as they went.
Katherine’s much loved second husband David predeceased her in July 2015.
She is survived by her daughter Jenny, her son David and his wife Lisa, grandchildren Jasper, Hollie and Sam, and her younger brother Alex.
They will all remember and miss the twinkle in her eyes when she laughed, her care and attention to her extended family and friends, her love of adventure, passion for the garden, and joy of feeding the birds. — Kay Sinclair