A life of achievement and determination
Sharon-Marie White-Robinson (nee Crockett) was born in 1961, the elder daughter of Bruce and Betty-Marie Crockett, and sister to Fiona and Lane, and grew up in Stratford.
At Samuel Marsden Collegiate School in Wellington, Sharon excelled at athletics, winning the intermediate and senior championships. She undertook a Licentiate in Speech and Drama with Trinity College in London, and went on to complete a Bachelor of Arts, English Literature, at Victoria University, graduating in 1983.
She returned to Taranaki and took up a role as public programme manager at the Govett Brewster Gallery in New Plymouth.
Sharon thrived in her role at the gallery, but travel beckoned, and in 1987, she headed off to Europe, meeting up with Lane briefly in London before securing a job in the skifields of Austria. She returned to London the following year where she was appointed editor and publications manager at the Chartered School of Designers.
Back in New Plymouth in 1991, Sharon further extended her arts management practice, working as school programme manager for the Festival of Arts.
She then moved to contracts management at local company Fitzroy Engineering, before further travel saw her spend time in Malaysia in 1993, where Lane and his young family were based, and then in Europe.
Sharon returned to New Plymouth where a new role back at Fitzroy Engineering in 1995 proved to be one that defined the remainder of her life. In managing director Peter White-Robinson, Sharon found her soulmate and the man who would become her best friend, fellow traveller, father to their two sons, Finn and Cole, and ultimately her carer, when a rare and baffling illness struck in 2015.
Peter and Sharon married in a memorable ceremony at their house at Kerikeri in the Bay of Islands, in 1998. In her typically unconventional style, Sharon arrived by seaplane, and wore deep green. Their first son, Finn, was born in 2000, and Cole arrived 16 months later. Being close to their grandparents, Nana and Poppa (Betty-Marie and Bruce), in Stratford, meant there were lots of opportunities to share their childhood, including family visits to the Bay of Islands.
In 2010, Sharon was ready to re-engage with the arts, and she co-managed the kinetic sculpture festival, Kinetica, with Graeme Beals, to great acclaim.
Sharon also resumed a hands-on role at Fitzroy Engineering while being a mother at home caring for the boys. This included conceiving (with Peter) the plan to travel around the world by boat. As owners of Fitzroy Yachts, a company Peter founded in 1997, they were well positioned to do this. When they purchased the ex NZ
Navy training vessel MV Kahu in 2011, their plan became real. Peter took charge of the engineering and Sharon the interiors. In 2012, with another family, a captain, cook, and teacher on board, they set off for what was to be a two-year adventure.
They headed first northeast, to Vanuatu, Fiji, Tuvalu, Kiribati, up to Hawaii, and finally to Canada, arriving in Vancouver in February 2013. Financial misfortune befell the family however, with Fitzroy Yachts running into difficulty while they were on the high seas.
The family settled in Canada, first on Vancouver Island, and later in Vancouver. Sharon returned to university and was excelling in her studies when she was struck with a rare illness, arising from an almost undetectable cancer, in 2015. By the time a diagnosis was made, the disease had attacked her brain, and Sharon had lost much of her gross motor function, including her ability to walk, and severely limiting her speech. She was given just months to live.
In typically determined fashion, she battled on, practising her speech for hours, eventually regaining enough to be able to communicate with, and continue to supervise, her much-loved family.
She defied expectations and prognoses, living for another five years, with every day the gift of time with Peter, Finn and Cole, and extended family, who visited as much as they could.
Cruelly, cancer struck again in 2019, and claimed her life on November 20, 2020. Sharon’s final years and days were spent at home, cared for and surrounded by her beloved husband and two sons, who cared for her with incomparable kindness, dedication and love. She passed away peacefully, surrounded by her family, listening to her favourite music, at home.