‘People person’ and storyteller to the end
When Len retired to Te Kauwhata he threw himself into the town’s life – Meals on Wheels, the community patrol, the TK Community Association, the rural women’s group (he drove people to hospital for appointments), the Christmas parade.
For those who knew Len, this all made sense. He was, after all, a ‘‘people person’’, someone who had put others first throughout his life – a, perhaps, somewhat unusual attribute in a man so successful in the cut and thrust of international business.
Len had a rural upbringing around the country, before staying for some years in Waikokowai, west of Huntly, after his father Jim accepted a teaching position in the small mining settlement. While still at school, Len ran youth groups, and it was during this time he picked up his lifelong reputation for storytelling.
Fresh out of school, he joined the NZ Forest Service as a cadet in 1958, and was soon in the thick of it, doing various stints as a young man, not long out of his teens, inspecting and rebuilding swing bridges in remote bush, where he was often on his own for long periods of time. And, in true bush poet tradition, he honed his storytelling abilities around the campfire.
As a working student, he negotiated the long route in getting his Bachelor of Engineering (mechanical) from Canterbury University, before deciding on the step that would take him around the world, when he joined Taupo-based forestry company, JG Groome & Associates.
JG Groome & Associates was one of New Zealand’s first internationally focused forestry consultancies. Len was made partner in 1971, and went on to help the company win one of New Zealand’s earliest Export Awards in 1974.
Together with John Groome and Pat Crequer, Len created a forestry consultancy that would take Kiwi expertise and ingenuity to some of the remotest corners of the earth for more than three decades from the early 60s.
It would be a life far removed from Levin, where he was born, the haven of Spring Creek, near Blenheim, where he grew up, and the coal mines of Waikokowai and other tiny provincial settlements.
In the early 1970s, just as he thought he was finding his feet at Groome’s, they were knocked out from under him at the annual forestry ball held at the old Tourist Hotel Corporation establishment at Wairakei.
Daughter Kim Palsenbarg says it was clear to all in attendance that night that the bachelor woodsman, known as an accomplished teller of tall tales, had met his match when Ruth agreed to a blind(ish) date set up by friends. They married in the tiny St Paul’s Union Church in Taupo in 1973.
Kim was soon joined by sisters, Kellie, and Shannon.
For a true family man, Len was destined to spend at least a third of each year, often longer, overseas and this was hard for him, Kim said. ‘‘I’m not sure he expected to travel as extensively as he did and there were times when I believe he might have wanted a simpler life.’’
The assignments included Irian Jaya, Vanimo, Sumatra, Perth, Malau, Bunbury, Nepal, Kuala Terengganu, Jamaica, Kuantan, Borneo, Burma, Suriname, Santiago di Compostella, Rome, Kaptagat, Eldoret, New Orleans, and, not to be forgotten, Turangi.
His daughters recall lots of waiting at airports for their father’s return and his awe-inspiring ability to sleep anywhere to counteract the effects of jetlag.
Len often established schools on these project sites so New Zealand staff could travel and live with their families in very remote areas of Papua New Guinea, Malaysia and Indonesia in the 1970s. He maintained this was essential for the success of the projects – happy families equated with good work and better results.
It also meant that expats could work alongside and train locals. Knowledge transfer was a key part of his philosophy. ‘‘But he said he’d never thought as a forest ranger he’d one day be interviewing and appointing school teachers,’’ Shannon said.
The family joined him on assignments over the years, schooling permitting. This meant the sisters enjoyed an international experience and outlook on life.
In 1981, Len was appointed to do a feasibility study into the restructuring of the Kenyan forestry industry – a project partly funded by World Bank and the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO).
The entire family relocated to a tiny (fewer than 50 people) forestry camp at a place called Kaptagat, in the Rift Valley province, more than 10 hours’ drive from the capital of Nairobi, and 100km from the nearest town, Eldoret.
Kaptagat was on the equator, but at three kilometres above sea level, the family needed a fire most nights. Kellie remembers: ‘‘We lived in a prefab house that had gaps where the walls didn’t meet. Dad used masking tape to prevent drafts.
‘‘Kim did correspondence lessons from NZ, while I went to the Kaptagat Preparatory School about 10km away – a leftover from the British Empire days – and Shannon charmed our Indian neighbours into dressing her in saris and feeding her jam chapattis. It was paradise for a family of animal lovers and we went on safari most weekends.’’
Len had a wicked sense of humour and took great pleasure in baiting his girls. For years, he told Kellie and Shannon, yams were huhu grubs, ensuring he got more on his plate.
When Kim was at boarding school and complained that all the other girls received tuck parcels from home, she received a huge package with TUCK PARCEL written on it.
‘‘The girls all gathered around to see what delicious treats I was about to have to share with them … out came a box of Tux dog biscuits and a note that said, ‘Is this what you mean?’ ’’
JG Groome & Associates eventually joined Finnish consultancy conglomerate Jaako Po¨ yry, becoming Groome Po¨ yry based, from 1989, in Auckland.
Len went on to become CEO of Fiji Forest Industries for a number of years, and was based in Malau, near Lambasa on Vanua Levu, before he moved to Perth as CEO of a large public company.
He returned to New Zealand about 1998 and continued to privately consult and undertake projects for multinational consultancies, including
Po¨ yry.
Len remained a storyteller to the end. To his children and granddaughter, he was known as ‘‘Mr Toad of Toad Hall’’ due to his love for Kenneth Grahame’s
Wind in the Willows.
But for all that, Len did not share Mr Toad’s egotistical, self-important, and greedy characteristics.
‘‘Our Mr Toad was a man of integrity, kindness, compassion and above all, love … love for his family, his friends, his colleagues the world over, and his community,’’ Kim told those at Len’s farewell held at St Margaret’s Church in Te Kauwhata.
❚ A Life Story tells of a New Zealander who helped to shape the Waikato community. If you know of someone whose life story should be told, please email Charles.riddle@wintec.ac.nz