A life dedicated to giving to his community
where his father worked at the newly-opened Tuai Hydro-Electric Power Station.
At age 10, Barry had an epiphany. Comparing the relative merits of the Prior car – a 1935 Hillman 10 – with that driven by his Uncle Don, an accountant, he made a definitive decision about his vocational future.
In 1942, when Charles was transferred within the Electricity Department, the family shifted to Hamilton.
Barry completed his primary education at Hamilton East School before enrolling at Hamilton High School, the future Hamilton Boys’ High. Following the example of Uncle Don, bookkeeping class was a priority.
If there was any deviation from the accountancy dream it came in the mid-1940s, when Barry flirted with the idea of a career in commercial art. A love of drawing expressed itself in the copying of Minhinnick cartoons and in the sketching of likenesses of wartime heroes Winston Churchill and Bernard Montgomery.
At a shop where he worked after school and on weekends, Barry drew a surreptitious ‘V for Victory’ sign, a piece of patriotic graffiti that was perhaps the sole rebellious act he was ever to be guilty of.
Barry finished high school having already completed the best part of his professional accounting qualifications and Chartered Institute of Secretaries exams. He took a job as a store clerk with the Europa Oil Company in Frankton whilst attending night school to complete his accounting education, including the ever-challenging cost accounting.
In 1949 Barry began the key relationship of his professional life when he accepted a job with Trevor Baron, a war veteran who was establishing an accountancy practice in Hamilton.
By 1951 he was fully qualified and soon became a partner in the firm of Baron & Prior. The association with Trevor Baron was sustained through sundry mergers from the late 1970s onwards until eventually the business became part of KPMG.
In 1990 Barry established his own firm with Trevor Blackburn, which became Prior Blackburn Chartered Accountants, where he worked until his retirement at the age of 70.
The year 1956 was seminal for
Barry. He married Janette Church. The union was to last 611⁄2 years. Barry and Janette had four children. However hard he worked, family was central to Barry.
He ensured he was home every night for dinner, taking an equal part in bathing and bedtime rituals, before often returning to the office. In the words of his eldest daughter, ‘‘he was always there when it mattered’’.
Also in 1956, Barry joined
Hamilton Jaycees.
In both leadership skills taught and basic voluntary ethic, Jaycees provided a template for a lifetime of service.
The first major project Barry was involved with was clearing scrub at Hamilton Lake to create the first children’s playground there, with all labour and materials donated.
Although the resulting facility has been upgraded many times in the intervening six and a half decades, two concrete cars created at the playground’s inception remain to this day.
By 1961 Barry was the president of his Jaycee chapter and of a mind to lead a community project of real significance.
He was at the forefront of a fundraising and lobbying campaign to acquire a Cobalt 60 machine for Waikato Hospital, with the goal of establishing a purpose built cancer treatment unit. Against opposition from central government, the Auckland Cancer Society and even radiologists, he rallied 24 Jaycee chapters to the cause across the Waikato and Bay of Plenty, eventually resulting in the raising of £75,000.
The Waikato Cancer Society was formed to administer the resulting new unit, with Barry its inaugural president.
Years later he was elected president of the New Zealand Cancer Society, becoming only the second non-medical person to hold the position.
Barry served on the PTA and Boards of Governors of his children’s schools.
In the 1970s he served two terms on Hamilton City Council. He was later a member of the Central Waikato Electric Power Board, the Braemar Hospital Trust and the Lake Tarawera Ratepayers Association. He was also a Justice of the Peace. In 1989 he joined the Freemasons, rising to the position of Master of his Lodge – akin to its president – in May 1995 and subsequently attained the rank of Past Grand Standard Bearer in the Grand Lodge.
In the 2006 Queen’s Birthday Honours Barry was made a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit for ‘‘services to the community’’.
In retirement Barry indulged and furthered his many recreational interests. A lover of music, he and Jan travelled throughout New Zealand and Australia on Operatunity tours.
A keen gardener, able to grow enough produce to make the household almost self-sufficient, arranged and cultivated in neat rows, he demonstrated as much patience as aptitude when holding a fishing rod, sustaining a record of eight hours’ investment per trout caught at the Prior family bach on Lake Tarawera. The lake also provided a means to swim and to water ski, the latter last enjoyed at 83. Always fit and active, squash gave way to lawn bowls in Barry’s seventh decade.
At 88, he set a new age record for zip-lining at the Bryce Resort in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley, USA. At 90, he could walk around Hamilton Lake in good time.
Woodturning was another significant feature of Barry’s later years. Given a lathe for his 40th birthday, Barry joined the Hamilton Woodturners Club in 1990 and refined his skills in Wintec classes in the early 2000s.
He produced ‘‘challenging and exquisitely detailed’’ work until the end of his life.
Barry was a gregarious and hospitable man, adept at debate and public speaking, who sustained a close, loving relationship with each member of his large family, never more so than in his declining months.
Barry Charles Prior died April 13, 2022. He is survived by his four children and their respective partners, 14 grandchildren and 7 great-grandchildren.