African childhood shaped lawyer’s life
Hugh Douglas Turnbull, lawyer, war pilot: b Canada, July 16, 1914; m Vie Connaughton; 2d, 2s; d Wellington, September 17, 2017, aged 103.
Outrunning lions on the Kenyan highlands and living a life of subsistence in 1920s Africa shaped Hugh Turnbull into a man of resilience and resourcefulness.
His life spanning 103 years was filled with adventure, from a childhood in the wilds of Kenya to flying in the RAF in World War II and later working as a barrister. Life was about experience and hard graft.
He worked fulltime into his 90th year at the Crown Law Office and travelled the world till he was well into his 90s. He was still running marathons as an octogenarian and exercised every day till shortly before his death.
Turnbull was born in Canada in 1914, the youngest of four children. His parents were both from Nelson but had eloped to Rio de Janeiro and later moved to Canada, where his father got a job as a civil engineer working on the Canadian railway.
When World War I broke out his father headed to Europe with the Canadian forces, leaving the family to manage on a small army handout. He was wounded, then sent to Africa to join the British forces. After the war the British Government had a scheme where retired soldiers were offered farms in the Kenyan highlands so he stayed on and called for his family to join him in 1920. It was a tough but adventurous life. Turnbull and his siblings were sent to a boarding school but he loathed it and ran away three times before his parents decided it wasn’t worth sending him back. He told them it was like ‘‘caging up a wild animal’’.
He would later say that his Africa years shaped his whole being. They made him strong both physically and mentally. In times of huge stress during his own war years, he called on these reserves.
While strong and resourceful, Turnbull was, at 14, illiterate.
In 1928, his maternal grandparents in Wellington suggested he come to stay with them and be educated before it was too late.
After graduating with a law degree from Victoria University in 1938 he embarked on a holiday to Europe. He enlisted with the British Army when he found himself in London during the callup. His regiment was sent to the Essex Coast to protect the Thames Estuary during the Battle of Britain, where he was put in charge of a mobile artillery battery. From there they moved to Norfolk, in eastern England, to take over a Canadian unit. In 1943 he joined the Royal Air Force, flying solo after only four hours of instruction. He went on to fly more than 600 missions as a spotter pilot and wondered how he ever survived.
After the war Turnbull worked on legal cases involving allied military personnel and German citizens. He was involved in some early work for the Nuremberg Trials, he flew doctors into Belsen, and was part of the liberation of Holland, dropping food parcels to the starving Dutch.
Turnbull, his wife and their four children returned to New Zealand in 1946. While working part-time in legal firms he saw the need for a revision of New Zealand’s legislation. He approached the Crown Law Office for a job and was appointed Assistant Compiler of Statutes in 1950. He was told he had two years in which to complete the work. Fifty-five years later, at the age of 89, he finally retired.
As well as working and studying for a Masters in Commerce, he lectured in accountancy and economics at Wellington Polytechnic, tutored at Victoria University, and marked papers for the International Correspondence School. An intrepid traveller, he often studied the language of the next country on the itinerary. In all he mastered 10 languages.
Turnbull remained fit and active well into his 90s. He walked the Milford Track for the third time at the age of 78 and would walk from Eastbourne to Pencarrow Lighthouse and back every weekend.
He learned yoga in his 60s and ran marathons into his mid-eighties.
Reflecting on his work in law when he received an ONZM for services to the compiling of legislation, he remarked: ‘‘What a long way I have come from a little bare foot boy in Africa.’’
Sources: Ruth Proctor, The Dominion Post.