‘Consummate volunteer’ devoted her life to helping
Susan Druitt, b August 1, 1939, Birmingham, England; m Ian Druitt (diss); d Christchurch, February 22, 2014, aged 74.
SUSAN DRUITT made a big impact in the world of volunteering, particularly as the secretary of the Porirua Hospital Museum and Resource Centre Trust for whom she raised $600,000 during the 14 post-retirement years she lived in the Wellington region.
She settled in Pukerua Bay in 2000 after spending the first 30 years of her life in the United Kingdom (from 1939-1969) and a further 30 years in Adelaide, Australia (from 1969-1999), working for the South Australian Government.
She retired to the Wellington region to be close to her Whitbybased younger sister, historian Helen Reilly, and her brother Peter Ingram, a former research biochemist and retired schoolteacher-guidance councillor, who lives in Riwaka at the top of the South Island.
In retirement, as the owner of a villa at the Summerset Retirement Village in Paraparaumu, she embarked upon a second career as the consummate volunteer.
In particular she gave her time willingly, cheerfully and intelligently to the Porirua Hospital Museum Trust for which she fundraised the impressive total of $600,000 since the trust’s inception in 2006.
The money was required to reroof and repair the building housing the museum.
In her role as trust secretary, working alongside trust chairwoman Helen Bichan, the former British nurse meticulously kept the minutes, successfully applied for $600,000 in grants, and personally showed visitors round the museum.
The museum is home to a collection recording the development of mental health services throughout New Zealand for over 150 years.
Amid her work for the museum she was active on a number of other volunteering fronts, working with police in Mana and the Red Cross in Wellington. She was the secretary of the Zonta Club of Mana, for which she knitted for several years, as well as being that club’s archivist and historian.
A yoga practitioner and keen walker, she also loved knitting baby garments for the House of Grace, He Huarahi Tamariki, in Tawa and other organisations.
In 2003 to 2004 she survived a bout of breast cancer and to celebrate life and her own recovery she took a trip to China.
Five years ago she bought a villa in the Summerset Retirement Village in Paraparaumu and it was not too long before she, with her sense of fun, found herself in the role of residents association secretary at the complex.
She was born in Birmingham, England, a month before World War II officially began when Hitler’s Germany overwhelmed Poland.
She was the second child of Marjorie and Edward Ingram.
During the war years her father worked as an engineer in a Lancashire munitions factory.
Susan Druitt was educated at Loreto College in St Albans School, north of London, and after leaving school trained as a nursery nurse.
In 1957 she moved to Scotland to be with her family in Bothwell on the River Clyde in South Lanarkshire.
She trained for three years in Glasgow before graduating as a registered general nurse and then worked for a year as a staff nurse at Glasgow Royal Infirmary.
While working as a nurse in Glasgow she also graduated as a registered midwife before moving to London in 1965 to work as an industrial nurse in a city bank.
Her nursing career ended in 1969 when she and her husband-tobe, Ian Druitt, emigrated to Australia, where they were among that country’s last group of ‘‘ten pound poms’’.
The couple made a home for themselves in Adelaide, until they divorced in 1985.
Susan Druitt, who did not like the shift work associated with nursing, took up a job as a building contracts officer for the South Australian government in Adelaide, a position she held until her retirement, aged 60, in 1999.
She was a member of the Adelaide Lionesses Club until it dissolved. At this point she then joined the Zonta Club of Adelaide East.
She began looking across the Tasman as a possible place to retire.
Her older brother Peter, who had been a biochemist in Canada, had emigrated to New Zealand with his family in 1974.
This was a major lifestyle and philosophical decision which also eventually resulted in his two younger sisters following in his footsteps.
Helen Reilly, her husband Robert and their family arrived in Wellington in 1987 to be followed by Susan Druitt in 2000.
She told friends she would like to live out 30 years of retirement in New Zealand.
She died in Christchurch Hospital days after suffering a brain haemorrhage on the West Coast of the South Island while holidaying with family members.
Her sudden death has left a number of Wellington region community organisations looking around for volunteers to fill a host of secretarial positions occupied by a woman who quietly, methodically and professionally just did the business.