1948 – 1975
Such is the patriot’s boast, where’er we roam,
His first, best country ever is at home.
Oliver Goldsmith, The Traveller
At the end of May 1947, soon after his return to Chichester from Buenos Aires, Park accepted an appointment as Pacific Representative of the Hawker Siddeley Group, to be based in Auckland. His duties would be similar to those he had had in South America as an air attache in 1934—6: to meet influential people in military, political and commercial circles and gather information to send home. He would also act as a conduit for complaints or requests to the group’s head office from customers in his region. During his last months in England he still claimed to be working on a book while in reality planning his return to New Zealand, writing newspaper articles on Argentina and Commonwealth Defence, enjoying the sailing season and, not least, relishing two exceptional public tributes to his past achievements.
The first of these came on 25 June, when he was awarded the honorary degree of Doctor of Civil Laws by Oxford University. This award was made all the sweeter by the company he kept that day: Field Marshal Lord Wavell, General Sir William Slim and Admiral Lord Fraser of North Cape, as well as Lords Oaksey and Goddard, received the same degree. Remembering Park’s two years with the university air squadron in 1932-4, the Orator warmly welcomed back ‘the bold innovator who first dared take a Vice-Chancellor for a flight, with you, Mr Registrar, flying in attendance!’ Indeed, he continued, he had himself been taken up and Park twice looped the loop, ‘then skimmed the elm-tops at hair-raising speed while shouting through some stentorian instrument into both my ears at once: ‘How do you like flying? Isn’t it grand?’ His one object had been to make ‘us older people’ still better disposed towards his young airmen, an heroic generation. ‘How keenly, too, his own vision pierced the future, and how single-hearted was his patriotism!’
The second tribute was the work of Sir Eustace Missenden, General Manager of the Southern Railway, who arranged for one of the newly built Light Pacific ‘Battle of Britain’ class locomotives to bear his name. The Sir Keith Park was named by Park at Brighton in September 1947. The first three engines in the class came into service in December 1946, the Lord Dowding and the Sir Keith Park were next (in January 1947) and the Lord Beaverbrook was sixth. As in 1940, Park had Dowding and Beaverbrook at either hand. Of the forty-three engines in the class, only seven bore, the names of individuals. The others were the Winston Churchill, the Sir Frederick Pile (named after the head of Anti-Aircraft Command), the Sir Archibald Sinclair and, last but one in the class, the Sir Trafford Leigh-Mallory. Sir Quintin Brand, unfortunately, was not commemorated.
Park was in touch with J.D. Heaton-Armstrong, Chester Herald, at this time about the design of his arms. He wanted them to allude particularly to the Battle of Britain and Malta and for his motto chose the words ‘Look Skywards’. No comment by or to Park on this choice survives and so his biographer may reflect on the significance of looking skywards in his life. As a professional airman and lifelong amateur seaman, he was acutely conscious of the need to seek guidance from the stars, clouds and winds. As a most loyal officer, the words echo the motto of the RAF, Per Ardua ad Astra. They invoke aspiration, to reach as high as possible, and they invoke also the heaven beyond the stars, for Park was a devout Christian. On the morning of 4 December, having placed his knightly and personal affairs in order, he was received by the King for the last time at Buckingham Palace to bid him farewell.1
A few days later he and Dol, accompanied by their son Ian, his wife Marie and their daughter Keithia (aged five months), sailed from Southampton for New Zealand in the Akaroa. They arrived in Auckland on 13 February 1948 and were at once besieged by reporters. Both Parks gave the press the bright, breezy quotes and anecdotes it wanted. Dol was wearing one of Keithia’s nappies disguised as a turban – a bizarre fact which she announced with characteristic delight in discountenancing interviewers. Park said that he thought airlines made a fetish of speed at the expense of comfort; mail and freight should travel as fast as possible, but not passengers. He had returned to New Zealand, he said, ‘to enter trade’: to help New Zealand and Australia to modernize their air forces. They needed modern aircraft to defend themselves and protect Pacific bases. However much they cost, it would be less than the cost of surface vessels and a more effective use of money.
In April he commented on the overall defence policy of New Zealand. The only new equipment promised was six frigates for the navy, but the RNZAF needed jet aircraft to replace the obsolete Mosquito. He was more than ever convinced of New Zealand’s need to look to its security through high quality equipment compatible with that of its allies because the United Nations had already shown itself to be ‘one of our more brilliant failures’. It provided no machinery for the control of atomic weapons and had not even approached the problem of disarmament. If New Zealand still believed the Empire worthwhile, she would have to pull her weight in its support. Britain must be helped to win her economic war because until that was won, fighting services could not be provided with the latest weapons. He urged the dispersal of manpower and industrial resources from Britain to other parts of the Empire. Britain was much more vulnerable to sudden, devastating attack than she had been in 1939 and such a dispersal would enable the Dominions to become self-supporting more quickly, thus reducing the strain on British resources.2
Park also spoke in April 1948 of New Zealand’s need for a modern well organized and efficiently managed air service, handling both internal and external flights. He advocated a two-part system: fast aircraft to handle mail, perishable freight and a few passengers travelling on urgent business; slower aircraft would suffice for normal passenger traffic, providing a service that was safe, reliable, comfortable and convenient. The National Airways Corporation was, he thought, doing a good job. Its crews were to be commended because they flew without modern navigational aids. Their aircraft must soon be replaced and their airfields greatly improved and moved closer to city centres: Park had visited Wellington recently, he said, and someone had asked him how he had travelled from Auckland. By bus most of the way, he had replied, though the early part had been by air. Wellington airport was then at Paraparaumu, some thirty miles from the city centre.
During the rest of 1948, Park often spoke about New Zealand’s aviation problems, military and civil, and in February 1949 he made some notes of a meeting he had had with Sholto Douglas, now Lord Douglas of Kirtleside and a director of the British Overseas Airways Corporation. Douglas told Park, who passed the information on to his employers and to the New Zealand government, that the Australian air force was reasonably efficient, but in need of new aircraft, that both Australia and New Zealand should encourage a greater rate of immigration of Britons and displaced Europeans, and that New Zealand’s airfields were the worst in any dominion that Douglas had visited.
Later that month Park addressed the Auckland Chamber of Commerce on the needs of civil aviation. When Pan American Airways introduced their giant Stratocruiser on South Pacific routes, Auckland would be bypassed unless it was provided with an airport of international standard; and if Auckland (the largest city) was bypassed, New Zealand would be bypassed. As early as July 1945 the Civil Aviation Department had declared that Mangere was the best site for such an airport in the Auckland area, but Whenuapai (an RNZAF base) had been made available by the government at no cost to the local authorities. Although Whenuapai was obviously unsuitable for prolonged and increasing civilian use, it was not until February 1951 that the Auckland city council combined with the chamber of commerce to form an International Airport Committee. Park, unable to attend the first meeting, was elected chairman at the second. He was active and persuasive, seeking support from airline operators, technical information from the government, engineers’ reports on particular sites, reports on the new airport under construction at Los Angeles, and ways of obtaining support from local bodies.
In the midst of all this activity the Parks learned the shattering news that their younger son, Colin, had been murdered in Malaya. He had been one of three European officers of the Perak Aboriginal Areas Constabulary who were killed on 3 September 1951 when bandits ambushed their raft on the Sungei Plus, a tributary of the Perak river. They had been on a tour of inspection with a native guide when a volley of shots swept the raft. One officer had been killed immediately, the other two had fallen into the river, wounded; the guide, unhurt, swam ashore. On 4 September 1952 Dol wrote to her niece, Betty Neill, ‘A year ago today Colin and I died. I include myself as all the best of me died with him. What rubbish people talk about Time healing, it just isn’t true, Betty dear.’ As for Park, he did what he had always done in the face of disaster, public or personal. He squared his shoulders and got on with his work.
He had talks with various ministers who made it clear to him that the government believed it had exhausted its resources for the present. He was, however, aware of the need to determine a site and secure it against the day when work could begin. By May 1952 a site at Mangere was under investigation, and Park asked the Minister of Works for a survey in July and corresponded with the landowner. In April 1953 he outlined progress over the past year and it was agreed that a new approach – direct to the Prime Minister, S.G. Holland – was needed. Park led a delegation that met Holland in May and in October asked for his confirmation that Mangere was the favoured site. At length, the Auckland city council ‘paid the ransom demanded by the Holland Government (assent to a 50/50 government/local bodies share in the cost of building and maintaining the airport) before it would commence a complete engineering survey (August 1954).’ Mangere was chosen in August 1955 and Park resigned from the committee, because of the demands of other business, before the end of the year.
Work actually began at Mangere in October 1960. Following his election to the Auckland city council two years later, Park was appointed first chairman of a committee formed to oversee the construction of suitable facilities there. The first passengers used the new international airport in January 1966, almost fifteen years after the original committee had been set up. Air Marshal Sir Rochford Hughes, who had served under Park in the Middle East and later lived in Auckland, campaigned for years to have the airport named after Park, because ‘he was the man largely responsible for it being built.’ The gesture would cost practically nothing, said Hughes, ‘but it would ensure that in a hundred years the name of Keith Park, which will be in world history, is clearly identified as a New Zealander.’ The government, however, took the view that it was only when a city was served by more than one airport that the name survived; otherwise, as with the official name of Sydney airport, Kingsford Smith, it did not.
Park’s most obvious memorial in Auckland is to be found at the Museum of Transport and Technology. He had often visited that museum and taken an interest in the exhibits and expansion plans. A representation of a wartime airfield, named in his memory, is now under development and the exhibits are dominated by a fibreglass replica of the Hurricane (OK 1) which he flew in 1940.3
In 1949 Park found himself involved in an attempt to sell a jet fighter to the Australians. It was reported in October that a proposal to construct jet fighters in Australia had been discussed by Park with the Prime Minister, J. B. Chifley. In Januaryl950 Sir Frank Spriggs, Hawker Siddeley’s Managing Director, said that he was prepared to begin production almost at once. The Australian government decided in February to build, under licence, seventy-two Hawker P. 1081 single-jet fighters, to be fitted with Rolls-Royce Nene engines, already in Australian production. Park announced in Canberra in March that the first Australian-built fighter would probably be completed and tested by mid-1951; it was, he later wrote, ‘more modern than anything possessed by the RAF.’ Late in 1950, however, it was learned in Australia that the P. 1081 would not be going into British production and the Australian order was therefore cancelled. Park had been placed in an impossible position by the joint failure of the Australian government and Hawker Siddeley to ensure that the fighter was ready for production before it was bought and sold. The collapse of the deal was not his fault, but it impaired his standing in Australia and undermined his confidence in his employers.
From that time on, Park was increasingly aware of the growth of American influence in Australian aviation and more wary than ever of the Australian press. He offered a ‘kindly warning’ in September 1951 about its strange ways to his old Battle of Britain colleague, Harcourt-Smith, newly appointed to the United Kingdom Services Liaison Staff in Melbourne. Only those phrases from his comments on Australian aviation that could appear critical would be published. Nevertheless, Park continued to travel regularly to Australia on Hawker Siddeley’s behalf, keeping up his contacts with civil and military authorities, and necessarily, the press. In June 1952 his announcement that the British government had placed an order worth £70 million with the group was widely reported in Australia. He went on to say that two factories would be established in South Australia for the construction of long-range weapons and the repair and maintenance of airframes and engines. Inevitably, as Park turned sixty and the group’s interest in Australia became larger, it made sense to appoint a younger representative based in that country. That was done in May 1953, but Park continued to represent the group in New Zealand and Fiji.4
Despite his personal prestige and best efforts, Park had little success in selling Hawker Siddeley’s products in New Zealand. However, he did what he could. In April 1950, for example, he told Sir Arthur Nevill (Chief of the Air Staff, RNZAF) that he was shortly to spend a week in Canada and a month in England visiting aircraft factories. On his return, he promised to brief Nevill on the latest developments overseas ‘before going round my Australian parish’. He also told Nevill that there was a definite need for a specialized aerial top dressing aircraft in New Zealand and Australia. He believed he might be able to persuade one of the group’s British or Canadian factories to produce an aircraft more suitable than the Tiger Moth for such important work. In the years 1950-1, the RNZAF placed orders for new aircraft from De Havilland, Handley Page and Bristol, but none from the Hawker Siddeley Group. Park was reduced to attempting to sell Nevill prefabricated aluminium houses (made by one of the group’s subsidiaries) for use as married quarters.
A later Managing Director of Avro, J.A.R. Kay, went to New Zealand in 1954 to try to sell Shackletons to the RNZAF. He found Park charming and helpful on ‘the grand strategy of the New Zealand Government as far as aircraft procurement was concerned’, but because Park disliked Avro’s representative in Wellington, said Kay, he declined to join Kay in the battle to persuade the RNZAF to buy Shackletons:
. . . had Park put his important voice behind our efforts we would have sold Shackletons. I never forgave him for it as I felt he allowed silly prejudices to influence his judgment. I suppose it rather typified what I always regarded as his rather conceited, possibly arrogant attitude. God knows he had enough reason to be conceited but it spoilt what was otherwise, in my opinion, a very fine gentleman. To me he was always charming and helpful but that was not always his attitude to others.
Park usually received copies of the same secret brochures on the latest military aircraft that were sent from London to the Air Department in Wellington and discussed them with the Chief of the Air Staff and senior government officials. Sometimes he wearied of working behind the scenes and spoke to the press. In September 1955 he said it was a shame that RNZAF pilots, who were as good as the best, should still be flying Mustangs and Vampires when even Peru had ordered the superb Hawker Hunter. His advocacy was not restricted to aircraft built by his own group: the English Electric Canberra was, he said, ‘another British answer to the Americans’ and he also praised the Bristol Britannia and the Vickers Viscount.
That same advocacy brought a Spitfire to New Zealand, though not for flying purposes. In 1955 he asked his old friend, Sir James Barnes (Permanent Under-Secretary for Air) if a Spitfire could be made available to the Auckland War Memorial Museum. Barnes replied that one could be presented as a gift, provided that New Zealand met packing and transport charges. A choice of two was offered and Park, who visited London in September, chose a Mark XVI (TE 456) which flew in the 1955 film about Douglas Bader, Reach for the Sky. With the help of the Conference Shipping Lines, the RNZAF, friends of the museum and a grant from the government, the Spitfire was transported to Auckland, placed on display in November 1956, and dedicated as a memorial to the Battle of Britain. Park gave an ‘inspiring address’, according to the museum’s director, and in the first weekend afterwards attendance jumped from the normal 1,500 to over 6,000.
His reputation and the cogency with which he expressed his views ensured that they were fully reported at home and overseas. Naturally, the licence which he gave himself to comment on aviation matters was not to the liking of all official quarters in New Zealand. As well as speaking out for modern military aircraft for the RNZAF, he was always critical of the government’s monopoly over New Zealand aviation, internal as well as external. His outspokenness – and his advancing age – led at last to his retirement. In March 1960 Dol told Betty Neill that the group would no longer need his services after next June: ‘so goodbye to our main source of income . . . keep this under your kilt as Keith is not broadcasting the news, he’s a bit sensitive about it.’ But he himself announced it to Beaverbrook. The group had sacked him, he wrote, because he had criticized the New Zealand government for ordering American Electras instead of British Comets, as recommended by the airline’s management.
Although his relations with his employers were sometimes uneasy, most of the senior executives remembered him with respect and affection. If his public criticism of aviation policies in Australia and New Zealand at times embarrassed them, it was always obvious that he had the interests of British aviation very much at heart. They also recognized that his distinguished record and personal authority opened doors in Australia and New Zealand, no less than in Argentina, for men with other skills – commercial, legal and technical. In the opinion of Frank Murphy, a test pilot with Hawker Siddeley, ‘it is not a good think for a salesman to be as senior and authoritative as Sir Keith was in relation to the company’s potential customers’. But Hugh Burroughes, Deputy Managing Director of the group, concluded that Park was ‘an outstanding man of charm and integrity and a first-class ‘ambassador’, reliable and well-informed.’5
‘Maybe, when I reach seventy, in a couple of years, I shall go into semi-retirement from business,’ Park wrote in September 1960 to an old friend from his days in Flying Training Command, ‘but I have not yet fully unwound my main spring after the excitement of the last war. I find it difficult to take more than a few days off work in this young country, where there is so much to be done in development.’
A year later, he was invited by an Auckland journalist to reflect upon his long-standing interest in business. In 1919, he said, he had invested his war gratuity (£500, all the money he had in the world) in British government stock; making that money multiply had been his hobby. His methods were orthodox, ‘except that I have never borrowed money and to this day have never had an overdraft.’ He studied the market carefully and read widely on investment, accountancy, management and company law. When he retired from the RAF, having always ploughed back profits and lived plainly, his investments were worth more than £10,000. That excellent result had been achieved in spite of losing half his capital overnight in the Wall Street crash of 1929. But he emphasized the fact that his financial interests had been a sideline in his life, never an obsession. After his wife and family, his first interest had always been his career and he had worked hard for promotion, but when his friends had gone on leave skiing in Switzerland or sunning themselves in the south of France, he had been just as happy to stay at home and play the London stock market.
A few days before his seventieth birthday, in June 1962, the Auckland Star, named Park one of New Zealand’s ten greatest men, and later that year, at a time when many men and women believe their useful lives to be over, he embarked on a new career as an Auckland city councillor. He stood for the Citizens and Ratepayers Association and served three terms of three years. In October 1962 he came fourth of the twenty-one candidates elected from a field of fifty-six; in 1965 he came second in a field of fifty-nine, and in 1968 he was third of forty-six candidates.
Sir Dove-Myer Robinson, then mayor of Auckland, had persuaded Park to stand for the council because he shared Robinson’s opposition to a Drainage Board decision to release untreated sewage into the Waitemata harbour. As a keen yachtsman, Park was vehemently opposed to such procedure, but Robinson never quite forgave him for joining the Citizens and Ratepayers instead of his own party, the United Ratepayers. He twice refused to stand for the mayoralty in 1965, on the grounds that it was a job for a younger man. Those were years of bitter personal conflict in Auckland politics and relations between the mayor and many of his councillors were often tense, but Park was never involved in any of the squabbling.
Although Robinson thought Park knew ‘as much about politics as I do about aeroplanes . . . sweet bugger all’, he also thought him calm and logical in debate, and, in a word, a gentleman. His fellow councillors respected him for his past achievements, but did not regard him highly as a councillor. Certainly, he was gentle, courteous and dignified; he was also, in their view, without much political sense. As a businessman, he consistently supported the interest of shoppers and commuters in the central city and helped to make Auckland more beautiful and better signposted. He also looked after his own neighbourhood, helping to preserve a magnificent gum tree in Lucerne Road (where he lived) and public access to Orakei Basin (which his home overlooked) against the wishes of a water-ski club.6
Park devoted much of his later years to his charitable interests. He was chairman of the Board of Trustees of the New Zealand Foundation for the Blind in 1956 and 1957. He toured the branches in the same spirit that had taken him to so many RAF units and his reports were characteristically crisp and clear, laying out the essential facts and naming the important names. In April 1958 he spoke up boldly in defence of the government’s decision to raise the amount that blind workers were able to earn without loss of social security benefits. As a result of ill-informed press comment, he said, some people supposed that blind persons were now able to support themselves, but this was emphatically not the case: the increases affected only a few and all the others needed at least as much help as in the past.
A hostel for epileptics in the Auckland suburb of Mount Eden was named Park Lodge in 1961 in appreciation of the part played by both Parks in raising money to buy and furnish it. By September 1969, the Epilepsy Association, in which Park served in several capacities, was ten years old and had ten New Zealand branches. He and his wife were part of a small group of devoted, hard-working people ready to tackle an illness that was often neither understood nor ‘acceptable’ to many, including employers, insurers and motel owners. For over seventeen years Park worked for the welfare of epileptics and was still chairman of the hostel committee at the time of his death: ‘one of our most respected and greatly loved members’, as the secretary wrote to his son.
Park was also chairman of a committee that raised enough money to save the church of St Matthew-in-the-City, Auckland. When Maurice Russell became vicar in 1967, the crypt was under water, the roof leaked and many windows were cracked or broken. The bishop feared that the church might have to be demolished, even though it was an important building, one of the few New Zealand churches with a stone vault over the choir, chancel and sanctuary. It was Russell who had the idea of seeking Park’s aid because he was a member of the small regular congregation and a man well known and admired in the community at large. His business interests brought him regularly into the city and he soon proved himself an active, no-nonsense leader of the appeal committee, assigning specific tasks to the members and expecting frequent progress reports. When St Matthew’s became a centre for single-parent functions, however, Park moved away. He did not criticize new customs and tolerances, but he did not share them.
He became the city council representative on the committee of the Pakuranga Children’s Health Camp in February 1966. Until 1974 he rarely missed a monthly meeting and even in that year was present more often than not. Opened in 1949, the camp (one of six in New Zealand) was originally intended for children who were physically ill or disabled. Increasingly, however, it came to cater for children who were mentally or emotionally disturbed. Each child spent six weeks at the camp and six courses were run each year. The director, Ernest Edwards, remembered Park well. He would often stay on after meetings to talk to the children. As a rule, he turned away questions about his military exploits and spoke instead about the thrills of flying and sailing. Edwards thought him calm and soft-spoken, but practical and even blunt when it came to acquiring equipment for the children: he never hesitated to telephone those who had what he wanted, whether he knew them or not, and would ask for donations.
Dol died on 10 August 1971. After more than fifty years together, it was a heavy blow to Park even though she had been very ill in her last years. Betty Neill thought she was his opposite in many ways, not only in size. Her sense of fun, her lack of seriousness (about either him or herself), made a valuable contrast in his life. He took great delight in her ability to make important people laugh and relax, and Betty believed that her private influence on his career had been important: he had few other close friends with whom he could discuss the options facing him. When she chose, Dol could match her husband’s famous efficiency. In 1942, for instance, she had organized a week-long ‘Wings for Victory’ campaign in Itchenor that raised more money per head of population than any other community in Britain that year. Her ability to raise money for good causes was put to regular use in New Zealand, and when she died the Auckland Star in just three words gave her a fine memorial: ‘helper of many’.7
In his last years Park corresponded frequently with Betty Neill, who lived in Wellington. His letters were affectionate and usually signed ‘Skipper’, a name by which he was often known to his immediate family. He still flew regularly to Sydney on business and there he would see his ‘kid sister’, Dorothy. ‘I miss Dol greatly,’ he admitted to Betty in December 1971, ‘but so far I have kept busy from early morning and Ian has been a great help.’ From time to time, he and Ian went fishing and in April 1972 they enjoyed a cruise round the Hauraki Gulf in boisterous weather. A week in bed with influenza (insisting, as a good sailor should, that this was by no means the result of the cruise) made him realize how lucky he was to have good health as a rule, ‘and little spare time on hand.’ On 16 June 1972, the day after his eightieth birthday, he wrote to Betty in high humour: ‘Never have I had so many telegrams, cards and gifts on a birthday.’
Early in 1973 he was involved in two traffic accidents. In the second, his car was rammed from the right and he was badly hurt: a broken arm, broken ribs and several bruises. Although he spent six weeks in hospital, Betty only learned this later. Typically, he made light of his injuries and stressed his grief for the damage done to his ‘lovely Triumph’. In June he took his annual over-seventy test for a driving licence. He admitted to a reporter that he had felt ‘terribly nervous’ beforehand, but he passed. ‘I’m very proud to have this little thing here,’ he said, holding a battered old licence.
On 8 May 1974 he wrote to tell Betty about the sudden death of his niece and much-loved housekeeper, Grace Stevens. A week before, said Park, Ian, Grace and he had been having tea when suddenly she had got up and gone through to the kitchen. She had called for Ian and he rushed after her, just preventing her from falling. He and Park had done what they could, but she was dead by the time the doctor arrived. The passing of ‘dear Grace’ was a great shock and Park missed her very much in the last months of his own life.
According to Marjorie Jones (nominally his secretary but in fact more of a companion at this time), he suffered several heart attacks in the 1970s. He did not like it known that his heart was faulty and very much disliked doctors. Arthur Parrish, a contemporary who had flown with the RFC in Palestine, came to know Park well in his last years and he too has said that Park was reluctant to admit he had an uncertain heart. When attending Battle of Britain parades in the 1970s, he liked to have Parrish near him, ‘in case he felt wobbly’, though Parrish was himself frail. Whatever his unease about his heart, Park carried himself as erect as a guardsman to the end. Late in 1974, he made his last public appearance when David Frost, the British television broadcaster, visited New Zealand to make a series of programmes, one of which concerned itself with the suggestion that life begins at seventy. Park, at eighty-two, was one of a number of men and women invited to testify to the truth or otherwise of this suggestion. He spoke so convincingly on a favourite theme – life begins afresh at every age – that many viewers later expressed regret that the whole programme had not focused on him.
He was over eighty when he last handled the controls of an aeroplane, with a young pilot at his side, and was as happy as a boy on his first flight, Betty recalled, when he landed. In earlier days, he had been a first-class amateur seaman and navigator and remained a willing, efficient crew member until the end. He also loved a circus and came close to actually wasting time whenever one was in his vicinity, going to watch the setting up and pulling down, and angling for invitations to go ‘back stage’. Never a man to sit still for long, unless to some purpose – such as preparing for or attending a meeting – he much preferred to be up and doing: driving to town, flying to Sydney or Wellington, sailing a yacht, digging the garden or playing bowls. Dol would gossip half the night, but Park was off to bed at 9 p.m. sharp whenever he was at home. He was very much a morning man, bright and breezy at dawn. ‘What shall we do today?’ he would say. ‘Let’s get organized!’ This phrase became a standing joke in his home, but he always lived by it. All his days, at work or play, were planned from start to finish. Near his end he told Betty: ‘I want you to know in case I don’t see you again that I have had a most wonderful life and enjoyed almost all of it.’8
On 2 February 1975 Park was admitted to an Auckland hospital and died peacefully in his sleep on New Zealand Day, 6 February. Among the many death notices appearing in Auckland newspapers was one from veterans of the Battle of Britain, who described him as ‘a father to us in those dark days’. He received a military funeral at Holy Trinity Cathedral, Parnell. Hundreds of people packed inside and many more stood on the lawn outside. The service was conducted by the Dean of Auckland, the Very Reverend J.O. Rymer, who spoke of his charitable work, Christian faith, ‘integrity of character, simplicity and graciousness in life’, but very properly emphasized his ‘steel-like sense of duty, which had to be exercised at whatever personal cost.’ The final hymn was ‘Now Thank We All Our God’, striking a cheerful, confident note, appropriate for Park’s farewell to this life. The Queen sent a message of condolence and the British government declared that he was a man ‘whose name will stand in the roll of honour of defenders of freedom for all time.’ On 20 February, at Ian’s request, an Auckland Aero Club aircraft scattered his father’s ashes from the air, the element in which he earned his fame, into the Waitemata harbour, the water which he loved all his life.
Numerous tributes were paid to his memory. Alan Light wrote to say ‘I have always felt that I owe my long and happy life to his skill and daring when I was his Observer in France in 1917.’ The CO of 48 Squadron told Ian that ‘the squadron has long been proud of its association with such a distinguished officer. We therefore share your deep loss.’ Stuart David, who had met Park in Egypt in the 1920s, remembered him as ‘a man I have liked and admired more than any man I have met in my life.’ Air Commodore A. R.D. MacDonell wrote on behalf of the Battle of Britain Fighter Association, of which Park had been Life President since Dowding’s death. MacDonell had served under Park in 1940 and ‘he occupied a special place in my heart and admiration.’ Group Captain J. A. Kent, who had ‘the very great honour to serve under him throughout the Battle of Britain’, offered his condolences. ‘He was an outstanding leader in the field,’ wrote Sir Rochford Hughes, ‘and never displayed the slightest physical fear. Yet he was a humble and kindly person, just as friendly to the lowest-ranked man as he was to his senior staff – and just as ruthless when they were inefficient.’ In Malta, Hughes recalled, Park could often be seen waiting for pilots as they taxied in after a patrol. With bombs exploding nearby and guns firing away, he would put an arm over a pilot’s shoulder and stroll calmly to the office, while the pilot’s one wish was to dive into the nearest slit-trench. Walking with Park during an air raid was for some a greater strain than fighting.
By no means all the tributes came from former servicemen. Many came from men and women who had known Park only in one or other of his civilian capacities, as a businessman, city councillor, charity worker, churchman or yachtsman. According to an Auckland Star editorial, ‘Few men who win history-book fame choose to turn to community activities in their retirement. Nor do many famous New Zealanders return home to take up such activities.’ But Park, never a man to bask in old triumphs, had done both.
A memorial service in his honour was organized by the Battle of Britain Fighter Association and timed to coincide with the celebration of the thirty-fifth anniversary of the battle. It was held on 12 September 1975 in St Clement Dane’s Church in the Strand and Group Captain Sir Douglas Bader was among those present. Although it may have seemed appropriate to invite an oid friend of Park’s to give the address on such an occasion, or to ask one of the pilots whom he so much admired (Alan Deere, perhaps, his fellow-countryman), the association wisely invited Bader to perform that task. He agreed when MacDonnell assured him that such was the unanimous wish of the association; everyone, he said, wanted Bader to do it. The present author, who met Bader in 1981, can testify that he was anxious that his words should be worthy of the subject and put an end to whatever bitter feelings remained about events in 1940. Bader, in fact, did Park proud. ‘He spoke for every one of us,’ said an old pilot later. The Battle of Britain, said Bader,
. . . was controlled, directed and brought to a successful conclusion by the man whose memory we honour today. The awesome responsibility for this country’s survival rested squarely on Keith Park’s shoulders. Had he failed, Stuffy Dowding’s foresight, determination and achievement would have counted for nought. . . . This is no sad occasion. Rather is it a time during which we can let our memories drift back to those halcyon days of 1940 when we fought together in English skies under the determined leadership of that great New Zealander we are remembering now. . . . Keith Park was one of us. We all shared the great experience. That is what we remember today. British military history of this century has been enriched with the names of great fighting men from New Zealand, of all ranks and in every one of our services. Keith Park’s name is carved into that history alongside those of his peers.9