Efficient, professional — Murray Day was a man of action
In the early 1980s Murray Day was granted an audience with the president of Pakistan. General Muhammad Zia-ulHaq arrived with eight armed escorts. Everyone in the room immediately assumed a position of extreme deference, bowing with such dexterity that their foreheads touched the ground. Everyone, that is, but the accountant from Hamilton, New Zealand.
The president looked across a sea of prone bodies to the only other person standing. Drawing an obvious conclusion, he remarked, drily, ‘‘you must be Day’’.
This was not Murray’s first visit to Pakistan nor his first encounter with the nation’s leadership. An earlier interaction, dining with the democratically elected President Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, had been a more convivial affair. In the intervening time Zia-ul-Haq had had Bhutto shot.
Murray was not easily fazed. In his capacity as the president of the International Squash Rackets Federation – now the World Squash Federation – he rubbed shoulders with the great and the not always good.
A British squash jubilee had seen him seated next to Prince Philip, lapping up an apocryphal yarn about how the Queen’s consort had had his arm broken by an overly vigorous All Black handshake. Murray loved getting the inside story. It was just like being back in Hamilton, at Stadium Waikato, conversing with Jono Gibbes’ parents, hearing tales from the Chiefs and Waikato rugby sides’ changing rooms.
Murray was no idle gossip though. Quite the opposite. Efficient, effective, professional, he was a man of action. From explaining the virtues of sportsmanship to a nine-year-old Susan Devoy, to overseeing the 1971 Men’s World Team Squash Championships, the first major international tournament to be held in this country, to assuming key leadership roles at the local, national and international levels, no one did more to advance the cause of the sport than he.
Murray oversaw the golden age of squash, facilitating unprecedented growth. He also brought the world to him – and Hamilton – insisting that for his tenure as president the seat of power be relocated to the Waikato.
Murray Charles Day was born July 25, 1931 in Hamilton, ‘‘in Ruakiwi Rd, just down from the water tower by the lake’’.
He was the second child of Eric Charles Day and Mary Margaret Day (nee McNicol). His elder sister, Heather still resides in the city. Eric, a fruit auctioneer, was made a Member of the Order of the British Empire in the 1953 Coronation Honours, for work in the field of ‘‘rehabilitation’’ in South Auckland, setting his son an example to follow.
As his parents were personal friends of H. G. Sergel, the second headmaster of Southwell School, Murray’s attendance was a certainty. First enrolled as a day student in 1939, he was made a prefect in 1944, his final year. He helped make the bricks for the chapel where his memorial was held nearly eight decades later. The sense of community the school imparted shaped his values for life.
Murray gave back to his alma mater, sending his two sons to Southwell, serving on the Southwell School Trust Board for 27 years, including six years as chairman and was later Warden of the Fellows (1991-2011). Along with the formal status of ‘Fellow’, he was made an Associate of Honour in 2015 for services to the school and the wider community. Three years later, Southwell opened The Murray & Ann Day Building, a teaching and learning facility specifically designed for Years 2 through Year 4.
Murray’s secondary education was enjoyed at Whanganui Collegiate School. He took an accountancy position in Auckland, whilst studying in the same field part-time at Auckland University. He was chosen to represent the institution in golf at the 1950 New Zealand University Winter Games.
Through sporting circles he met Ann Johnston, beginning a courtship that continued either side of Ann’s working holiday in Europe. Upon Ann’s return, she and Murray were married on February 13, 1957. Settling briefly in Hamilton, the newlyweds then set sail for the United Kingdom, where Murray passed the last of his accountancy exams. He was admitted as an Associated Chartered Accountant (ACA) in 1959 and granted FCA status a decade later.
Once back in the Waikato, a home was built in Arran Rd and children were born. Murray’s accountancy career began as one half of the firm Fisher Day and evolved through the addition of sundry subsequent partners, eventually amalgamating with the international firm Deloitte. A partner specialising in auditing, especially of larger organisations, one of his most prestigious professional jobs was the auditing of the New Zealand Dairy Company.
The traits that defined Murray the accountant were very much those that informed his vast contribution to the community. A suit and tie man who believed in well run meetings and the wisdom of talking sport, not politics, he appreciated the virtues of formal structure. Discipline informed his time in the New Zealand Territorials, when he rose to the rank of captain.
A skilled golfer, who maintained a single figure handicap for 31 years, Murray was chairman of the Hamilton Golf Club, overseeing the amalgamation of the men’s and women’s game at St Andrews. He was the first amateur to be invited onto the board of the New Zealand Professional Golfers’ Association, a position he held for 11 years.
Murray joined the Hamilton Central Rotary Club in 1980, serving as its president from 1986 to 1987. A master of time management, in an era when weekly meetings were nominally mandatory he maintained a 100% attendance record. Among the first to volunteer for any task, he was renowned for his fundraising acumen, never more so than in the founding and sustaining of the Rotary Charity Golf Day at St Andrews, an institution for the last 33 years, which annually raises over $10,000.
Murray was also active as an administrator and fundraiser in Waikato medical circles, serving as the inaugural chairman of the New Zealand Blood Transfusion Trust, founding a company that acquired Waikato Hospital’s first lithotripter machine and sustaining a long, active relationship with Waikato Hospice, an organisation of which he was a life member. In the 1980s he served on the Waikato Hospital Board. In 1983, as chairman of the Waikato CT Scan Appeal, he spearheaded efforts which raised $2 million.
Having first graced a squash court in 1939, just three years after the game itself was introduced to Hamilton, Murray was an A-grade player. Holding various positions within the Hamilton Squash Club – and its patron until he died – he became president of the New Zealand Squash Racquets Association in 1969, just as the sport was beginning to peak in popularity, continuing until 1971. Serving as his country’s representative to the International Squash Rackets Federation from that same year, he was elected its president in 1975, doing such an outstanding job that the constitution was altered to permit him to remain in that capacity for seven years. In 1992 he became the inaugural president of the Oceania Squash Federation.
Such was Murray’s prowess in sports administration that in 1993 he was elected chairman of the New Zealand Sports Assembly, a lobby group which brought together representatives from all major codes, collectively representing 1.8 million affiliated members.
In the 1981 New Year Honours Murray was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire for ‘‘services to Sport and Education’’. He held life membership to all the squash organisations he had helped shape. In 2009 Murray was inducted into the New Zealand Squash Hall of Fame. The formal citation, quoted knowingly by Dame Susan Devoy, a former multiple world champion, at his memorial, stated that he ‘‘was one of the key figures in the explosion of squash in the early 70s . . . his popularity, innovative style and organisational ability helped to transform the [world] organisation into an efficiently run global body and paved the way for turning squash into a game for the masses’’.
Murray Charles Day died March 18, 2022. He is survived by wife Ann, sons Robert and Peter, their respective spouses and four grandchildren.