Manaaki is on his way
Tertiary studies are not going to be cheap for former Kaitaia College head boy Manaaki Hoepo, but he has won a number of scholarships that will help him pay his way.
He added to the list last week when he received the Far North (Kaitaia) RSA’s 2020 Trigg bursary, worth $6000 over three years.
Manaaki will be pursuing a degree in the performing arts (dance, music and drama) at Otago University, but his overarching ambition, he said, was to be New Zealand’s first Ma¯ori Prime Minister.
He received the bursary from RSA president Angel Erstich.
The bursary honours the memory of Flying Officer Lloyd Trigg, born at Houhora in 1914, who died, along with his crew and 42 of the enemy, when he pressed an airborne attack on a German submarine in the Atlantic Ocean on August 11, 1943. He was posthumously awarded the Victoria Cross, the only VC awarded solely on the evidence of the enemy, the captain of the submarine, who survived.