Fire destroys sporting memorabilia
Swimming prodigy hopes blaze from dehumidifier acts as warning to others
Agroundbreaking New Zealand sportswoman has lost a treasure trove of sporting memorabilia after a dehumidifier sparked a devastating Auckland house fire.
Monique Williams nee Rodahl — Olympic swimmer and New Zealand’s youngest ever Commonwealth Games athlete when she competed in 1974 aged 13 — now hopes her tragedy acts as a potentially lifesaving reminder to others.
International medals, Olympic team photos, swimming record certificates and a collection of 15 deeply personal journals from Williams’ years competing were among the irreplaceable items lost in the December 10 blaze at the Remuera house.
A swimming prodigy, Williams caught the national spotlight at the 1974 Christchurch Commonwealth Games before finishing fifth at the 1975 World Championships, aged 15, and competing in the 1976 Olympics.
“My mum and dad kept absolutely everything from my career,” Williams said. “It’s not just memorabilia — it’s
my story. To lose so much is really tough.”
The fire marked another chapter in her extended family’s remarkable history — one that has wavered from the heights of Olympic gold in 1928 to surviving Nazi oppression during the World War II.
Yet Williams preferred to put a positive bent on the recent fire, seeing it as a chance to remind Kiwis to keep a closer eye on the dehumidifiers that mostly run unnoticed in our homes. She said she had only momen
tarily popped out of her Chapfield Pl home on December 10 to buy groceries.
Then, returning shortly after, she didn’t even smell smoke.
“I opened the bedroom door and basically walked into the flames,” she said.
“The whole room was black and just by opening that door the oxygen fanned the flames.”
Williams and her son Tim escaped the blaze, while her husband and daughter were away at the time.
“It is devastating watching and knowing you are helpless, you can’t do anything,” she said.
A Fire and Emergency
spokeswoman said a dehumidifier kept “close to flammable materials” caused the blaze.
“It’s a reminder to make sure anything flammable is at least one metre away from heat sources (heaters, dehumidifiers, fireplaces),” she said.
Williams said the dehumidifier wasn’t close to flammable materials.
Photos of Williams’ grandfather Bernard Leene — a three-time Olympian who won a Netherlands 2000m tandem cycling gold medal in 1928 and silver in the same event in the 1936 Berlin Games — were retrieved blackened.
Leene and his brother would later go on to be key members of the Dutch
resistance against Nazi Germany.
Williams’ mother Antoinette Leene also courageously played her part, riding through the countryside as a courier for the resistance with messages strapped to her body.
When Antoinette Leene later travelled to New Zealand to train as a nurse, she met Williams’ father on a boat and the pair stayed put in Auckland.
They became Williams’ swim coaches, recording every step of her daughter’s career.
Williams said her family had faced plenty of adversity in her past.
That included her Olympic career ending anticlimatically when New Zealand boycotted the 1980 Moscow Olympics in protest against the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan.
To help her get through her recent challenges, Williams says she is grateful for the support of the North Shore Swimming Club where she is junior head coach.
“That’s always been my happy place so that is always where I end up going,” she said.