A humble and talented sportsman and businessman
Many Southlanders gathered on a late March afternoon at the Cabbage Tree to farewell long-term Otatara resident Peter Jackson, the city businessman who has represented Southland in five separate sporting codes.
Jackson, who credited his primary school years at St Theresa’s in north Invercargill for developing his interest in sport and his talent as a pianist, was always modest about his achievements,
His wife Robin said it was only when going through old records kept by his late parents, footwear retailers Cyril and Nell Jackson that she realised her husband had represented his province at softball, indoor basketball, snooker, clay-bird shooting and golf. People agreed he was a natural sportsman but even more importantly he was ‘‘just such a good sport’’.
From his teenage years boarding at St Kevin’s College in Oamaru, where he was selected to the first 15, first 11, softball and tennis teams, he was a stand out.
But when he was older, and had retired from the family footwear business in Cambridge Place, he took up the more sociable bowls and made winners of his teammates. He played golf for the Invercargill Golf Club, of which he was a life member, all of his days, excelling in more recent times at masters meets.
For all that, Robin said she best remembered the joy her husband found in fly fishing the quiet waters of the south - an art taught by her dad, the late Harold Smith.
Born in August 1934, Peter was the treasured only child of Cyril and Nell Jackson, a working couple running the successful Charles Boyce shoe store then on Tay St.
When he left school, Peter learned commercial reality, joining the warehousing firm Sargood Sons and Ewing before joining his dad and becoming ‘‘Young Mr Boyce’’ in a retail business that shoed generations of Southlanders.
Peter had his father’s gift of finding shoes for ‘‘difficult’’ feet and would visit rest homes with a selection on request.
He had met and married Robin Smith in February 1960, Leigh joining the family in March 1961, Anna in December 1962, Richard in 1965 and Kate in 1967.
They moved from Duke St to Marama Ave South in 1978, finding a place with enough room for four teenagers and many friends.
Peter was always a generous and welcoming host, and many people would gather at Jackson’s after operatic shows in which both Peter and Robin were involved.
He would play the piano at the Civic Theatre, as years before he played for dances at St Mary’s hall.
Many years before that, as the city’s top marked piano pupil, Peter was chosen to play two examination pieces at the official opening of Invercargill’s Grand Hotel, pictured in the Southland Daily News with his returned soldier uncles Reg and Les Small.
They predicted a fine future for their young nephew, and it did come to pass.
Peter’s death leaves Robin a widow at Otatara.
He is survived by their four children: Leigh and Ian Taylor in the UK; Anna and Ross McLean in Invercargill; Richard and Suzanne Jackson in Wanaka, and Katie and Gary Davis, Invercargill, and their families.