Man who died alone
The last vestiges of Mike Flavell’s life were removed from his Napier house yesterday morning.
It was the house Flavell was raised in – and it was the house he died in.
No-one knows exactly when the 72-year-old died because noone noticed he was gone for about two weeks.
He’d become a bit of a recluse in later years, especially since his best mate Doug Boyd died two years ago, and it wasn’t unusual for neighbours not to see him for weeks at a time.
Flavell never married and had no children.
Neither did his only sibling, Glenice, who died in 2000, and when his mum died in 2011, aged 98, the only family he really had was Boyd and his three daughters.
On a warm morning yesterday, the movers arrived to collect what was left of Flavell’s furniture, lined up outside the front of his house, a short flight of stairs off Shakespeare Rd.
A row of wool fadges full of old framed pictures, tinned food and chipped crockery sat on the ground outside the front door.
The house has all the markings of a recluse.
Wooden window frames barely hold on. Paint peels from cracked, rotten weatherboards, and a thick layer of detritus coats every window.
It was a young woman across the road who noticed something wasn’t right and alerted police on September 10.
They came and took away Flavell, who they think had probably been dead for a fortnight.
The woman, who did not wish to be named, had a baby about six months ago and spent days at home.
‘‘You didn’t see him much, but he always put out his rubbish and recycling and I noticed he hadn’t put it out, but his car was still there,’’ she said. ‘‘The next week it happened again so we went up to the house. There was washing on the line. We knocked on the door. There was no-one there, so I went to the police station and told them they might want to have a look,’’ she said.
She said she rarely saw Flavell, but if they were ever putting their rubbish out at the same time, she’d say hi. ‘‘I wish I’d gone up and had a talk to him’’.
In summer, he would bring an old chair down to the road and sit outside his garage. ‘‘He’d just sit there people-watching’’.
Flavell was cremated on September 21. About two dozen people went along. The same number attended an afternoon memorial function at the Taradale
Community and Sports Club the next day. One of those was Lance Connolly, who’d known Flavell since the pair were in the same class as 5-year-olds.
Speaking over old school photos at his Napier flat, Connolly, 71, pointed to a tall, beaming, solid kid wearing a broad grin.
It must have been obvious even then, 1957, that Flavell was going to be a giant of a bloke.
‘‘He was built like a Viking,’’ said Connolly.
‘‘We used to muck around a lot into our teens. We’d get up to a fair bit of drinking in the 60s. He was the biggest by far so when we were underage, it was always him who went in and bought the ale.’’
Flavell worked in the McKenzies department store in Napier.
He’d later go to Taumarunui then Auckland to work in stores there before returning home in the late 1990s to look after his mum and sister after his dad died.
For several years, Flavell was a barman at the Napier Cosmopolitan Club. After his mum died, he pumped petrol at a gas station in Taradale.
‘‘He was a very sociable guy, but something happened when his mum passed away,’’ Connolly said.
‘‘He doted on his mum and by god did he look after her. She was a lovely lady. He became a bit of a recluse. I got the police on to him a couple of times because I couldn’t get him on the phone, and I’d go up to his house and he wouldn’t answer the door. Even the police said they had trouble getting him.’’
Connolly last saw Flavell at The Warehouse about four months ago.
‘‘He lived a humble life. He was a gentle giant. I wasn’t surprised to hear he’d passed. He was a recluse, but people did care about him,’’ he said.
Doug Boyd’s daughter Julia Smith remembers Flavell as a weekly visitor to the family home over at least 15 years.
‘‘He and dad met playing cricket in the 60s. Mike went away for a few years. When he came back, they were still really close,’’ she said.
The sisters were the closest thing he had to family. When arranging his memorial and burial, Julia and the funeral director discovered Flavell’s mother was not buried in the plot with his father and sister.
After a thorough search of Flavell’s property, they found his mum’s ashes in his garage.
‘‘So we’re going to do the right thing and get them all buried and back together again,’’ Julia said.