Drawings of ‘tender irony’
TERRY O’Neill was the face and voice of North Otago sport for 50 years.
If there was a sporting event somewhere in Oamaru, chances are Mr O’Neill was there taking notes or calling the game.
He was also there for his family, there for his colleagues, and he was most certainly there for his community.
That was the type of bloke he was. Reliable.
If you needed a hand, he would help out.
That is kind of how he got into sport journalism, really.
Mr O’Neill died in Oamaru Hospital on June 17, aged 85.
A few weeks earlier, Mr O’Neill was inducted into the Waitaki Sports Hall of Fame.
He was too ill to attend the event, but he would have deflected the attention to the people he reported on as he always did.
When he received the Waitaki services to sports award in 2019, he told the Otago Daily Times the spotlight needed shining elsewhere.
‘‘My part has always been the easy part — I enjoy doing it,’’ he said.
‘‘The ones who should be getting this award would have to be the people who go out there at night to train them and on the weekends to do their jobs coaching, managing or administrating.’’
O’Neill got paid during the years, but not an amount most people would consider an income. It was passion that kept him going.
His real job was teaching. He taught at St Kevin’s College for 42 years and covered sport in the weekends in in his spare time.
Mr O’Neill’s decision to enter the world of sports journalism came out of a sense of duty.
North Otago rugby was not getting a lot of coverage in the local newspaper in the early 1970s, so he helped lobby the
Oamaru Mail about providing some copy.
The newspaper agreed and O’Neill and a colleague began providing reports once a week.
He continued working for the
Oamaru Mail up until 1990. Following that, he provided regular reports for the Otago Daily Times until he retired in 2021 — 50 years after filing his first report for the Oamaru Mail.
Mr O’Neill, who played representative rugby for the Old Golds from 1957 to 1963, also had a lengthy broadcasting career.
In 1977, be began working for 4ZB and worked for several different stations throughout the years.
During his stint behind the mic, Mr O’Neill covered 370 live games of rugby.
Most people will remember Mr O’Neill as a tireless sports journalist. But his sense of duty was not limited to the sporting arena.
His oldest son, Simon O’Neill, said his father was always putting his hand up to help out and that often meant the family had to chip in as well.
‘‘We would always be stacking hay or helping friends of Mum and Dad’s who had farms. That was just how the community worked back then. You used to rotate around to help everyone else,’’ Simon said.
If they were not stacking hay, they were helping run a motel ‘‘or getting dragged out of bed early in the morning to do the milk run’’.
‘‘I’d be like what? Dad, you’re a teacher’’.
‘‘It was just something we used to do and until now I’ve never really thought about the wheels spinning in behind that.’’
Mr O’Neill was born in
Oamaru on March 16, 1937. His father, Bill, and mother Jean owned a farm in Weston. Mr O’Neill was the oldest of five boys — Edward, Barry, Alistair and Rex.
His early schooling was in Windsor and he attended secondary school at his beloved St Kevin’s College where he would later teach.
He married Noeline Frances Kane (Frances) in the chapel at St Kevin’s College on December 16, 1962.
The couple had four children — Simon O’Neill (1964), Gabrielle Kidd (1967), Louise Kearney (1970) and Marcus O’Neill (1971).
Mr O’Neill’s long service to the sporting community was widely acknowledged. He received the Waitaki Citizens Award in 2007 in recognition of his efforts.
He was made a life member of the North Otago Rugby Football Union in 2012 and received the Alexander Keith Memorial Trophy 201314 for outstanding service to North Otago Cricket.
He was recognised nationally in 2020 with the Queen’s Service Medal, and shortly before his death he was inducted into the North Otago Sports Hall of Fame.
Otago Daily Times editor
Barry Stewart said Mr O’Neill had made an ‘‘immense’’ contribution to sports journalism.
‘‘People like Terry just don’t come along very often in this industry,’’ Mr Stewart said.
‘‘He was reliable and knowledgeable and versatile, and I know every sports editor he worked for appreciated the service he gave to covering sport in his patch.
‘‘All journalists should be impartial, of course, but Terry really bled maroon and gold, and had a nice way of promoting sportspeople from his beloved North Otago without just being a cheerleader.’’
Mr O’Neill is survived by his wife, Frances, sons Simon and Marcus and daughters Gabrielle and Louise. — Adrian Seconi
PARIS: French cartoonist JeanJacques Sempe, who won international acclaim with a series of more than 100 drawings for the covers of magazine, has died aged 89.
His cartoons often showed small figures set in large urban landscapes, drawn in delicate lines and offering gentle social commentary on modern life.
‘‘Tender irony, the delicatesse of intelligence, the jazz: we will not be able to forget
Sempe,’’ French President Emmanuel Macron wrote on Twitter.
‘‘We will sorely miss his view of the world and his pencil.’’
One of France’s most famous visual artists, Sempe drew scenes of daily life in elaborate detail, usually from an overhead or faraway perspective and in pastel colours.
Born on August 17, 1932 in a village near Bordeaux, Sempe did not complete high school and drifted from job to job.
He briefly joined the army before moving to Paris in the 1950s and starting to earn a living with his drawings.
He had his first success in the late 1950s with the Le Petit
Nicolas series of children’s books about a schoolboy, written by Asterix writer Rene Goscinny.
His international breakthrough came in the late 1970s when he started drawing covers for sketching city life as seen by an outsider looking in, his characters often lost in big crowds or set against wide panoramas.
Most of his drawings had little or no dialogue, but short captions often subtly hinted at the characters’ worries or hopes.
‘‘There is a lot of silent emotion in the drawings of Sempe,’’ Le Monde cartoonist Plantu said on France Inter radio.
Sempe’s favourite subjects were children, trees, cats, musicians and life in Paris and New York. His cartoons rarely used text to make wry comment on bigcity life.
A November 2015 New Yorker cover showed a couple going for an autumn stroll on a New York pavement as two doormen shovel dead leaves in front of them to create the illusion of a forest walk.
People riding bicycles were also one of Sempe’s favourite subjects.
‘‘It’s always been one of my dreams; to have a group of friends who go for bike rides in the country every Sunday morning.
‘‘I kept trying to organise it but everyone was always too busy to slow down for it,’’ he told
Yorker in 2019. — Reuters