A mighty totara falls as Rob Bartley passes away
Paying tribute to a kind and generous Whanganui businessman, local identity
Iwas one of the many fortunate people to have Rob Bartley as part of my life’s journey and, as a very large group, we joined with his family to farewell him after he sadly passed away last week.
While many more were closer to him than I, in the short time that I spent with him he had a profound and positive impact on me.
Shortly after relocating our family to Whanganui I learned of this businessman who was the stuff of legend — not only because of his successes as an entrepreneur but also from the work he did in the business sector and community generally.
He was described to me as a man who “could dip his hand into a bucket of dirt and pull out a diamond” — quite a reputation.
So, I was a bit nervous when, on the second day of a new job, the phone rang and, almost indistinguishable over the rumble of a V8 engine, a voice said: “It is Rob Bartley here, welcome to Whanganui, I need you to please [do about five things] and I will be in tomorrow to meet you and see how you are getting on”.
Fortunately, I managed to do the things he asked for well and began an all too brief period of assisting him and his children (Angela, Brendon and John) all make their marks.
He was a decision maker, with an astuteness I have only seen on one or two other occasions in a 30-plus year career and he was also a mentor.
I recall, working with him and John through a challenge back in the days when they owned Viper Machinery on Wilson St.
Rob directly determined the root cause of an issue and in a split second then told us how to implement the solution — he said “it’s okay to make mistakes so long as you learn and fix the system so it doesn’t happen again”.
A week later I was back at Viper and heard John say the exact thing to a staff member.
You only needed to meet Rob once