Teacher, stalwart of small-town culture
Barry Mostyn Williams, b Palmerston North January 3 1932, m Maureen Birchfield 2d, 1s; d Wellington January 15, 2014, aged 82.
LONG-TIME community champion, teacher, leader and adult educator Barry Williams is fondly remembered for his wit, intelligence, humility and kindness.
While Mr Williams battled ill health in recent years, a summary of his life produced for his memorial service in Paekakariki is testament to a life well lived over 82 years, a love of music, a lifetime of service in the community and an ability to encourage others.
Mr Williams and wife Maureen Birchfield moved to Paekakariki in 1989. He was elected chairman of the Paekakariki Community Board in 2001 and received a civic award for his community leadership during the Paekakariki floods in 2003 and 2004.
Former Kapiti mayor Jenny Rowan remembers meeting him while he was standing, ankle deep in loose shingle, in the middle of State Highway I after the village had been bombed by a one-in-a100-year rainstorm bringing down 3000 cubic metres of shingle from the Paekakariki escarpment.
The recovery remained a major issue for the rest of his term with Mr Williams chairing the Paekakariki Emergency Management Group and working alongside daughter Meg and the community to get the village back on its feet. Soon after his appointment as chairman, the board faced its own demise after the then council voted to abolish all three community boards in Kapiti.
Mr Williams led the fight against the move, culminating in a successful protest to the Local Government Commission which not only agreed that the boards be retained, but also directed that the Paraparaumu/Raumati Board be established.
Born in Palmerston North, Barry Williams’ own research showed he was a 38th generation descendant of Pepin the Short.
He was educated at Nelson College, Victoria University, completing a BA in English, and Canterbury University, where he completed a Bachelor of Music.
Mr Williams took a lively interest in all the communities he lived in.
After graduating from Christchurch Teachers’ College he went on to teach at Huntley School in Marton, Nelson College, and in London, before moving his focus to adult education.
Mr Williams became involved in adult education as a 17-year-old attending the first Music Leadership vacation school in New Zealand.
Aged 19, he trained his first adult amateur choir in Leeston, subsequently moving on to do similar work in Marton, Richmond and Westport – all small towns where he saw the amateur as ‘‘king of local culture’’.
He was West Coast tutor, lecturer and senior lecturer in the Department of Extension Studies at Canterbury University from 1961-74 and was subsequently appointed director of University Extension at Massey University, a position he held until 1989.
He published a number of academic papers on music and community education and in 1978 published Structures and Attitudes in New Zealand Adult Education 1945-75, a dissertation on New Zealanders at work and play during a transitional period of our history.
Mr Williams took a lively interest in all the communities he lived in and seemed to have a genuine affection for all of them.
He was a former president of the Christchurch Society of Contemporary Music, an instructor at the evening school at Waimea College and very involved in the Nelson Provincial Choirs movement as a trainer and conductor.
After moving to Paekakariki he became a long-time volunteer, trustee and chairman of the Paekakariki Station museum.
He and Maureen were founder members of the award-winning Paekakariki Xpressed community newspaper and remained stalwart writers and supporters throughout its 10-year life.
Mr Williams’ last major project was to write (along with 10 other volunteers) Knyvett Pioneers, a social history of the Knyvett family in New Zealand – particularly Edmund and Emma Knyvett – his great-great grandparents who first arrived in Nelson in 1850.
He was also known for his sense of humour, penchant for protest, and delight in sharing good company.
A television documentary about role reversal, When the Boot’s on the Other Foot, had him demonstrating how to fold a nappy when this was foreign territory to most Kiwi blokes.
He was a founding member of the NewLabour Party and cofounder of the Left-overs, an informal group of disillusioned Left-wingers, which came together after the collapse of the Alliance Party.
He carried a plywood shield in the 1981 anti-Springbok Tour protests, and was amongst what the Dominion Post described as ‘‘ageing peace marchers’’ thrown off a train for protesting against the Iraq war in 2003.
He was also a founder member of the Kapiti Prostate Squadron, an informal group of retired clever blokes.