Visionary with cando attitude
STEWART HARVEY spent more than 20 years working tirelessly for the preservation of New Zealand heritage in the Otago region.
A visionary advocate for reviving, restoring and promoting Dunedin’s heritage cemeteries, Mr Harvey was described by the Dunedin Family History Group as ‘‘one of the city’s heritage heroes who got stuff done that others put in the ‘too hard’ basket’’.
He was a founding trustee and chairman of the Historic Cemeteries Conservation Trust of New Zealand, and the driving force behind it and was responsible for ‘‘Stories in Stone’’, a series of brief histories based on research of individual gravestones in the historic Northern and Southern cemeteries and published regularly in the Otago Daily Times for about 10 years.
Mr Harvey died in Dunedin on May 8 after a protracted period of ill health. He was 77.
Born on October 2, 1939 at his parents’ home in Richardson
St, Mr Harvey was the oldest of the Harvey children. He had two sisters, Jenny and Anne, the younger being his cousin who was brought up with the two Harvey children after her mother died in childbirth.
His father, William, had his own carrying business and his mother, Doris, was a school teacher who enjoyed having children around her.
In a personal memoir, Mr Harvey wrote that his parents were always helping people and used to take in welfare children. And he recalled the family home as the place relatives and others could stay and be treated as family.
As a child, he developed asthma and bronchitis, something that plagued him for the rest of his life. But his health problems did not stop him leading an active and full life working in the world of business and commerce for the majority of his life and later, working for the preservation of local heritage and using his business and accounting skills to further the aims of a variety of cultural and environmental organisations.
Like many children of his time, he had an enjoyable childhood, and plenty of freedom. He built trolleys, played marbles, read and collected comics and found stamp collecting ‘‘an engrossing hobby’’.
He also collected old telephones, biking to the Post and Telegraph Workshops off Andersons
Bay Rd and paying 10 shillings each for used and surplus telephones. Those later became the nucleus of an extensive collection — of antique telephones, sewing machines and radios. And with his friend Rennell Chivers, he enjoyed crystal sets, Mr
Chivers’ father being something of ‘‘a radio buff’’.
Mr Harvey was educated at St Clair Primary School, Macandrew Intermediate then, for four years, at King’s High School, leaving with his University Entrance qualification at the end of 1956.
He began his career in accountancy in January 1957, when he went to work for WE C Reid and Co, Chartered Accountants. It was a path he never regretted, finding his time with Reid’s, ‘‘a great experience and good training’’.
He also enrolled for a fiveyear course of tertiary study, attending university lectures before and after work. He graduated with a BCom from the University of Otago in May, 1962.
Early the next year, on January 26, 1963, he and Lorraine Wilson, a young woman he had met in 1957, were married at St Clair
Presbyterian Church where Mr Harvey was treasurer and had been involved in Bible class.
The couple moved to Andersons Bay where Mr Harvey became involved with the Andersons Bay Church and also taught Sunday School.
They were married for 54 years and had three children, Gary, Alison and Trevor.
After 10 years at Reid’s, Mr Harvey left in 1967 for J& A P Scott Ltd and a position as company secretary, a job he later described as ‘‘a challenge from day one’’.
One of the early challenges was dealing with the change to decimal currency and, after brothers Eric and Graeme Marsh, the owners of Cooke Howlison Ltd, took over Scott’s, Mr Harvey had the task of computerising the motor parts operation. He later became director of Allied Computer Processors Ltd, the computer bureau which did all the company’s processing.
In 1973, he joined Cooke Howlison as group financial manager and, in 1980, was appointed general manager.
From the mid1980s, when the previous accountant retired, Mr Harvey also became company accountant.
In 1989, he was appointed chief executive to the Oakwood Motor Group which included Cook Howlison’s interests in Dunedin and Blackwell Motors in Christchurch.
But health problems, and reaching the age of 50, led him to reassess his life. He retired from Cooke Howlison’s in 1990, he and his wife deciding to live in London where he worked as finance and planning manager with the London
Underground’s Jubilee Line. He retained that position until the couple returned to Dunedin in 1992, after travelling extensively throughout Europe.
During the following decade or so, he had a variety of jobs, the one he enjoyed most being as accountant in the
Humanities division at the University of Otago. But more of his time was being devoted to family history and a variety of conservation and historical projects.
In a book, Echoes in Stone, he recorded the history and genealogy of the Harvey family, going back to their days in Cornwall where they were stonemasons. And he organised a family reunion which was held in Dunedin in October 2000. The same year, he was elected chairman or convener of the Dunedin branch of the New Zealand Society of Genealogists, a job he held for four years.
He voluntarily gave his time to projects ranging from the Orokonui Ecosanctuary, to initiating a conservation management plan for
Dunedin’s northern and southern cemeteries and forming the Historic Cemeteries Conservation Trust of New Zealand in 2001.
Dr Chris Rudd, senior lecturer in the Department of Politics at the University of Otago, and a member of the Historic Cemeteries Trust, described Mr Harvey as ‘‘the driving force’’ behind the trust. The $345,000 reconstruction of Larnach’s Tomb — ‘‘a real treasure’’ — in the Northern Cemetery, was ‘‘really a monument to him’’, Dr Rudd said.
With his background in
Heritage advocate
accountancy and management, Mr Harvey was able to get things done. As one trust member said, he ‘‘had the heart as well, but also the organisational skills to back that’’.
In September 2003, he was invited to join the board of trustees of the Southern Trust, a gaming machine trust and a month later he joined the board of trustees of the Otago Natural History Trust. The Southern Trust tipped in a grant of $1 million to kickstart the building of the predatorproof fence at Orokonui.
For his work in helping establish the Orokonui Ecosanctuary, Mr Harvey was awarded honorary life membership of the Otago Natural History Trust in 2010. That same year, despite health problems, he organised a project to photographically record every grave, headstone and plaque in the Southern Cemetery. He was also recruiting trustees for the Dunedin Prison Trust, a charitable trust he helped form to buy the old Dunedin Prison and convert it into a major tourist attraction.
In 2012, he received a New Zealand NZ Historic Places Trust Heritage Award for work in conserving cemeteries and Larnach’s tomb. And, in the 2013 New Year’s Honours List , he was awarded a QSM for services to heritage conservation in Otago.
Mr Harvey had spent nine years working on a biography of the Victorian architect R. A. Lawson. With Norman Ledgerwood as lead author, the book was officially launched in September 2013.
And in November 2015, despite debilitating health problems, he was at Orokonui for a visit by Prince Charles.
Beyond his involvement with heritage causes, Mr Harvey was interested in the outdoors, being at various times a keen rockhound, kayaker and skier. He also enjoyed reading widely right up to his death.
In its most recent newsletter, the Dunedin Family History Group praised Mr Harvey’s stubborn nature, his tenacity and his ability to get things done, describing him as someone who, when he had an idea, ‘‘would never take no for an answer’’ and ‘‘always had a vision’’.
‘‘His passing leaves a huge hole in the city’s heritage sector,’’ newsletter editor Heather Bray said.
A loving husband, father and grandfather, Mr Harvey is survived by his wife, Lorraine, his three adult children, Gary, Alison and Trevor, and six grandchildren.
— Kay Sinclair