Legal executive’s lifetime highlighted by duty to community
b September 1930 d January 28,, 2024
Anoted pioneering legal executive, Ivy Pack lived a life of very fruitful professional and community service in Christchurch. She died in Christchurch on January 28, aged 93.
Doris Ivy Goodyear was born in London in September 1930, but in 1932 her family moved down to Whitstable, a seaside town in Kent, where she did her growing up.
The young Ivy – as she preferred to be known – wanted to be a teacher after winning a scholarship to a grammar school in Canterbury and passing the war years there as the Battle of Britain raged overhead.
The new world ushered in in 1945 by Britain’s first Labour Government democratised access to education after the Beveridge Report, but that could not, in a deeply debt-ridden Britain, encompass opening up university and advanced study.
Ivy left school in 1945 (aged 15) to work at the local council offices as a short-hand typist, based in Whitstable Castle. She was very well regarded in this role and became an area netball representative and was involved with the Girls’ Nautical Training Corps from 1948 to 1954.
After the Dunkirk evacuation and D-Day, young people in Kent and the coastal areas especially would have had a sound appreciation of coastal defence for England. Ivy took the role seriously and rose to the rank of commanding officer. There were other benefits: daughter Yvonne notes that Ivy “was popular with the lads and during this time, at 16, met her husband of 72 years”, Alby Pack of the
Men’s Nautical Training Corps. The couple became engaged at 18 and married, aged 21, in 1951. They had one daughter, Yvonne, in 1953 who was cared for by her maternal grandmother while Ivy continued in employment.
Britain was a very depressed economy and so in June 1959, seeking the standard migrant opportunities, the three Packs left for New Zealand (on a £10 ticket as assisted migrants) on the final voyage of the cargo-passenger ship, the Captain Cook. It was a good time to move, as the Korean War wool boom boosted the NZ pound above that of UK sterling.
Starting out as a temp in Christchurch, with Yvonne (Yve) now at intermediate school, Ivy found permanent parttime employment with the law firm Brassington and Co, then later became Alan Brassington’s right-hand woman fulltime until he died in 1980. She continued in the firm until she retired.
Known and respected as a very determined “my way or the highway” executive, Ivy was highly regarded for her legal competence, and soon took charge of administering wills and the firm’s conveyancing. Ivy was a quiet but effective change-agent of great positivity of outlook, and played a key role in formalising the role of legal executives, gaining a certificate from the New Zealand Institute of Legal Executives, which was formed in 1975.
Pack was made a fellow of the institute in 1976 (a rarity for a woman in a then male-dominated profession) and an honorary life member in May 1993 when she retired from her legal work, but remained highly supportive of, interested and connected to the organisation.
Ivy was a woman of distinct capacity who completed a certificate in liberal studies at the University of Canterbury (1981), became a justice of the peace (1984) and relished that role until she retired from myriad activities in 2021 (aged 91). Yvonne notes that through the JP role her mother “met many people from all walks of life and developed a broader view of the general population” than was possible in an office.
A staunch Labour Party supporter, Ivy was secretary and treasurer of one branch of the St Albans electorate, even while working, supporting local MP and Cabinet minister David Caygill (and Sir Geoffrey Palmer at times), and was awarded life membership of the Labour Party in 1999.
Later, Ivy and Alby assisted Senior Net
Shirley and Canterbury Senior Net, Ivy tutoring in keyboard skills (and secretary for both), Alby teaching computing, and both becoming life members of these groups in 2002.
Ivy somehow made time to volunteer in the Riccarton Community Police Constables’ Office and received a very well-earned Community Service Award from the Riccarton-Wigram Community Board on September 1, 1998.
The Packs loved travel and took annual trips. They also built a bach at the Boyle River settlement in Lewis Pass in 1963 where they could indulge their love of native flora and fauna, and in whose river Ivy once caught a 7.26kg trout. Ivy’s ashes will be scattered in their shared sanctuary, and in due course a memorial seat will be erected in their memory.
If anyone dares to query the contribution of migrants to their adopted homeland, they only need to follow the on-and-off duty career of Ivy Pack - a multi-talented, community-focused and highly engaged woman whose service should, and shall, be cherished.
Doris Ivy Pack (née Goodyear) is survived by her husband Alby, daughter Yvonne, two grandchildren and six greatgranddaughters.