Woodham, Ivan Bruce Interview

Good morning. Today is Friday 12th November 2021. I am Lyn Sturm and on behalf of the Knowledge Bank I have been given the privilege of interviewing Ivan Woodham. I’ll hand it over to you now, Ivan.

My name is Ivan Bruce Woodham. I live in Taradale, and I was born in Waipawa on the 22nd January 1944. My parents’ names were Nellie and Ray Woodham. I was the fourth member of my family [with] my brother[s] George and Arthur, and my sister, Margaret. We lived in a little settlement called Te Kura which was just out of Otāne, and when I was five years old in 1949 I went to Otāne Primary School. And I was there until I was fourteen, and I did a brief stint at the Waipawa District High School before my family shifted to Hastings. That was in 1959. I went to Hastings Boys’ High School; I was there for three years. I was lucky enough to make the Hastings Boys’ High School First XV rugby team, and being sports minded I played for Hastings Rugby Club; at the same time my Uncle Tom asked me if I would like to take up amateur boxing, which I did.

We lived in Gascoigne Street in Hastings, and I used to bicycle out to Havelock North to the Scouts Hall three times a week for training. In 1959 I had my first fight, and then in 1961 I got asked to represent Hawke’s Bay at the New Zealand Championships in Invercargill. And then the next year I went to the champs [championships] in Gisborne with my good friend, Paddy Donovan.

In 1963 I was asked to go to Gisborne to fight a chappie by the name of Toro George; they were selecting a boxing team to tour Australia. At that time I’d only had about fifteen fights, and when we got into the ring I didn’t know the guy I was fighting. Uncle Tom, my trainer, said to me, “Ah, you’ll beat this guy, he’s a piece of cake.” Well when they introduced us, they introduced this chappie, Toro George, who was a three times New Zealand champion. He was a British Commonwealth bronze medallist, and he was South Pacific gold medallist from Auckland who was in the red corner; and representing Hawke’s Bay is Ivan Woodham in the blue corner. Well I looked at my Uncle Tom and I thought, ‘You told me I could beat this guy, but you didn’t tell me’ [chuckle] ‘that he’d had all these fights’. Anyway, I don’t know whether it was fear or what, but I boxed the ears off this guy and got selected to go to Australia with the New Zealand team. I had five fights over there – won three and lost two.

I had to give up my rugby because I couldn’t do the boxing and the rugby at the same time in case I got injured. But the many years that I played rugby, I got knocked out five times on the rugby field, but never got knocked out in the boxing ring. [Chuckles] Anyway, in 1964 I had quite a few fights around New Zealand in preparation for the 1964 Tokyo Olympic Games. Paddy Donovan and myself, and Wally Coe and Brian Maunsell – we got nominated to go to the Games but they only sent two, Paddy and Brian Maunsell.

Did they give you a reason for that?

I think the reason they didn’t send us … ‘cause they didn’t have enough money; they really couldn’t afford to send four guys, they only sent two. Anyway, I wasn’t good enough and I missed out.

I continued boxing for another two years after that, and then I took up wrestling. I got married to my darling wife in 1967 – I threw the boxing gloves away and I took to wrestling my darling wife. [Quiet chuckle] That was in 1967 and it’s 2021 now and we just celebrated our fifty-fifth wedding anniversary.

Congratulations …

How about that?

… well done.

Yeah. In 1969 my wife and I decided to go to Australia, and we tiki-toured around the place; worked in Brisbane and worked in Rockhampton and Sydney and Melbourne. And then I somehow found out how to get my wife pregnant and we ended up with our daughter, Megan.

We came back to New Zealand in 1970, and in 1971 Megan was born and then in 1973 our son, Christopher, was born. In 1972 we built our first house in Tamatea in Napier and I worked for Reliance Tyre Service over in Hastings. Eighteen months later I got transferred to Dunlop Tyres in Napier where I was Service Manager and for three and a half years I did the run from Napier to Wairoa and the surrounding area, looking after transport – people’s tyres, fitting tyres, fitting grader tyres … you name it.

Then in 1979 I left Dunlop Tyres and my wife and I bought a service station in Napier … bottom of Shakespeare Road opposite the Cathedral in Napier. We had that little service station for ten years, and then in 1989 we sold that and we moved to a Caltex Station in Karamu Road in Hastings which we had for thirteen years. We sold that in 2002, and I thought, ‘What am I going to do for a job? I’m too young to retire.’ And when we had the service station in Hastings we bought a house in Tomoana Road which was built in 1931, and I spent three and a half years stripping all the doors, the windows, the ceilings, taking it all back to its original. When we sold the service station my wife said to me, “Why don’t you do that full time?” Which is what I’m doing today, which is nineteen years.

In 1989 we got asked by some people from the Taradale RSA [Returned and Services’ Association] Concert Party if Fayne would like to play the piano for them, which she did. She took that up, and the next year I joined the concert party; and twenty-three years later we’re still members of the concert party. And for twenty-one of those twenty-three years, Fayne was musical director, and it was her job to select the music, learn it and try and teach us how to sing it.

So how many in the group?

At that time there would’ve been thirty people in the group. Today we are down to about sixteen, that’s all.

Hobbies?

Well I haven’t got many hobbies because when we had the service station in Hastings here I joined the Hastings Bowling Club, and our service station used to sponsor some of the tournaments there. And then they asked me if I’d like to join, and being very competitive, I thought, ‘Yeah, yeah – why not?’ So I joined the Hastings Bowling Club and I won the Junior Pairs with my brother, Arthur, and I won the Singles title. But then my grandson, Josh, came along, so I looked after him with my daughter Megan, ‘cause she had split up with her partner. And they lived with us in Hastings, and he took up all of my time so I didn’t play bowls after that. Yeah.

You cannot put a price on that, sir …

No, you can never put a price on that. Actually he’s twenty-one next year, yeah. His birthday’s the 31st of January and mine’s the 22nd so there’s only a week between us.

So you can have a party together?

Yeah. Twenty-one … unbelievable; all the things we’ve done over those twenty-one years.

How about telling us about them?

I’ve got a son, Christopher; he was born in 1973, so he’s forty-eight. He lives at home with us but he also works with me in the stripping business. [Laughter]

My daughter, Megan … she’s a hairdresser, and she works Wednesday to Saturday, and on Monday and Tuesday – that’s her two days off – and if I get busy I’ll ring up Megan and say, “Look, I’ve got a job – are you interested in coming for a day or two days?” And she jumps at it; she’s been doing it probably for the last ten years. And it was the same with young Josh, my grandson – when he was at school he’d come out with me in the school holidays. Yeah … we did a job at the back of Havelock North, and we were there for a whole week … five days, and at the end of the week I gave Josh his money. He was only about sixteen or seventeen at the time, and I gave him … $330 it was, and he thought it was Christmas. And him [he] and Grandma, they went into town to buy some clothes. And Josh walks into the shop and Fayne’s right behind him, and Josh is looking around and he kind of looked at Fayne and said, “I know what I’m buying, Nana, you just go and sit outside on the seat.” [Chuckles] And he came out with four big bags of clothes that he’d bought himself. He’d bought them himself and he’d paid for them with the money that … yeah, that I’d given him. Yeah.

You trained him well, Grandad. Can you tell us about what you do, this stripping? There must be a certain way, how you go about doing it?

Yeah. Most of my work is in older homes where people have painted over the top of doors and windows and skirting boards and ceilings and staircases. Normally, if I can, I’ll heat gun the paint off, and then I use a Cooper’s product, it’s a paint stripper which is made in Woodville. And once I take the paint off I put this stripper on to take the rest of the paint off that’s stuck in the door or the architraves or the skirting board in what I’m doing, and that brings it back to its natural …

Wood? [Do you] oil them, or ..?

Yeah, if people want them oiled, I oil them, or if they want them varnished … I did a job down the road here one day for this little old lady, and she said to me, “Ivan”, she said, “I’ve got a pressed tin ceiling.” She said, “Would you be able to paint it for me?” And I said, “Yeah, yeah, I can paint it.” And it was in squares, probably about twelve-inch squares, and there was about twenty-four of them right across the ceiling. So I got up on my ladders and I painted them all; next day I went back and I put the top coat on, and she came along and she said, “Have you finished, Ivan?” I said, “Yeah yeah, it’s all done.” And she looked up at the ceiling like this, and she said, “You missed one.” And right in the far corner I’d missed one [chuckles] and I didn’t realise [chuckles] so I had to get up there and [chuckle] put an undercoat on, and put a top coat and finish it off. [Chuckle] Yeah.

But my job takes me everywhere. I’ve been down to Christchurch twice doing houses in Christchurch, I’ve been to Wellington numerous times; I’ve been to Auckland, done houses up in Auckland.

So you do the whole house inside?

Yep.

What about outside?

No, no, no. No. I did a whole house in Martinborough one year – that took me six weeks to do the whole inside. Somebody had heard about me and this lady rung me up from Martinborough and she said, “Oh, I believe you do this stripping?” So [chuckles] I went down and had a look, and she’d painted all the walls – she had the house painted – all the walls and the ceilings, and she wanted me to strip all the timber and it was all varnished. And I said to her, “Why didn’t you get me in first before you painted all the walls? Why didn’t you get me in before you went ahead and did it?” Because I had to mask everything; had to mask all the walls, all the floor.

So it was a huge job then?

It was a huge job, yeah. And she was a schoolteacher, this lady, and she talked and she talked and she talked; and my wife Fayne said to me – she got me on the side and she said, “Do you want to do this job?” Because the lady said I could stay on the premises; they had a spare room so instead of coming back and forwards, you know, so I’d go home on the weekends and come back on a Sunday night, you know? And I said, “No.” She said could you put up with living with that lady for five weeks or six weeks, or however [long] it’s going to take?” And I said, “No, I don’t think so.” Anyway, so I said, “What I’ll do is I’ll put an inflated price in, and that’ll scare her off”, see? [Chuckles] So I told her it was going to cost x amount of dollars hoping it was going to scare her off, and she said, “Oh, that’s okay, when can you start?” [Laughter] It backfired on me. Anyway, I said, “Oh, it’ll probably be so many weeks”, or something, and she said, “Look, I’m going to Auckland for three weeks and my husband’s going down to Wellington staying with his sister; can you come in that time frame that I’m not going to be here?” Which was ideal, [chuckle] yeah. So I looked after myself for three weeks, but I used to go home on the weekends and come back early Monday morning. Yeah.

These liquids you use to do the job, do you have to wear special clothing?

Yeah, I [I’ve] got to wear gloves and I [I’ve] got to wear a mask because of the fumes. And I’ve got to make sure that my arms … I don’t have any flesh that I can get any of the product spilt on my arms, or even on my face. But every three months I’ve got to have a lead level test done because there’s lead in the old old paint. Every three months I have a lead level test done through my doctor – it’s just a blood test – and then the Department of Health look at it, and they ring me up and say, “Look, Ivan, your lead levels are a little bit higher than they were three months ago.” At the moment my lead levels are 1.8, and when you get to 10 … you’ve just about died when you get to 10. Yeah, mine are 1.8. But then, see, every eighteen days you get new blood, so what levels are in your blood, you pee it out. So every eighteen days you’re getting new blood in your system. But I’m still getting it in there somehow, but I don’t know how … I don’t know how I’m getting it. I’ve given up heat gunning stuff, especially ceilings. I used to heat gun a lot of old, old houses … the rimu ceilings, you know, and you’re way up there on a scaffolding; you know, you’re eighteen feet up in the air, and the air doesn’t move as much as it does down here sort of thing. So you might wear a mask, but you’re still inhaling … you’re still breathing it in. Yeah.

They haven’t come up with any other solution or anything?

Well not really, no, unfortunately there’s not. And I’m the only person in Hawke’s Bay that [who] does it full-time. There’s nobody else that [who] does it full time, and that’s why every day my phone doesn’t stop ringing. [Chuckles] My wife said to me one day, “When are you going to retire? You’re seventy-seven, when are you going to retire?” And I said, “When my phone stops ringing.”

Well about three years ago I went to Waipukurau; I was doing a job down there. And I buy this Cooper’s stripping product in a ten-litre drum, but then I tip it out into a little cookie jar, a little plastic cookie jar about so big, right? And I was leaning over one day tipping this stripper into the little cookie jar, and I always keep my phone in my top pocket, and as I was leaning over my phone fell out and it went straight into the stripper, [chuckle] would you believe? It could have gone there or there or there, [chuckle] but it went straight into the stripper. Well I dropped the drum quick as I could, and I put my hand in the stripper – it’s pretty caustic, this stuff – put my hand in the stripper, pulled the phone out, opened it up, took the back off it and took the sim card and the battery out. And it was making funny noises, this phone, [chuckle] but all I wanted was the sim card, I wasn’t interested in anything else. And I went home and I told Fayne what had happened, you know? She said, “Well there you are – you told me that when your phone stops ringing”, [chuckles] “you’re going to retire.” But it didn’t – I went out and bought another one. Yeah – it was only a $29 phone, it wasn’t an expensive one. Yeah. [Chuckles]

Just as well. And what about your siblings?

Well, I’ve got one daughter and one son. Megan’s a hairdresser, been a hairdresser for twenty years now, and I’ve only got one grandson, which is young Josh. And I’ve got one son, Christopher; he’s forty-eight. I’ve only got one brother left, my brother George, he’s the only one left and he’s eighty-six. In 1999 my brother, Arthur, died. He used to work with us at the service station in Hastings here. Arthur died, and then eighteen months after that my sister, Margaret, died. Both died of cancer, so we’re down to two, just George and I.

George lives in Havelock, and he’s starting to slow down a bit. Every time I go and see him – I try and get out and see him about every three or four weeks – and every time I go out there George talks about the same thing all the time. When I was a kid he was a good runner, and he played in the Ross Shield team, which is a representative team for Central Hawke’s Bay. He played in there in 1949, and I played in the same team in 1956. And George was a good runner, really good runner, but he was a good rugby player as well. And he used to run – they used to have a track in Waipawa, you go across the bridge – on the left-hand side there’s a running track there, and George used to run there all the time. And he said to me about eighteen months ago, he said, “I’m going to join the New Zealand Seniors competition.” He was going to go to the Seniors Games, it was, and he was going to run in the hundred metres. Yeah – he would’ve been about eighty-four at the time. And I said to him, “George”, I said, “you’re eighty-four years old.” He said, “Yeah, I know, I know.” He said, “The guy that holds the title at the moment, he’s ninety-two or something. He’s really, really old, ‘cause he’s in this age bracket.” And he said, “It might take him eighty-six minutes to run a hundred metres, but he still runs.” And he said, “I’m going to do it.” And I said, “Ah, don’t be stupid, George.” I said, “You’ve got to start training, you know, and you’re eighty-four years old.” Anyway, he didn’t do it; I think Covid beat him. I think he was happy that [chuckle] Covid came along and he didn’t have to go.

So how has Covid affected your life?

It really hasn’t affected my business, because even now I can still go into people’s houses; because ninety percent of the houses that I go in the people aren’t home, they’ve gone to work. So they say, “Well look, there’s the job, Ivan”, you know, “away you go”; and you do it on your own. Probably the first month was a bit difficult because I couldn’t go into people’s houses; but people bought stuff to my shed knowing that Covid was going to strike, sort of thing.

Oh, there’s one thing I forgot to tell you. April 17th 1999, I had a heart attack. I woke up one morning and I come [came] and sat down on the bed and I said to Fayne, “I don’t feel very well.” And she said, “What’s wrong?” I said, “I’ve got all this compression in my chest, and I’m clammy and I’m really, really cold.” So I got up – you wouldn’t believe this – I got up and I went up to the kitchen; this is the thing I do every morning. Went to the kitchen, put the jug on, switched it on, put two pieces of toast in the toaster, and then I walked back and I said to Fayne, “I don’t feel very well.” And she jumped out of bed and she said, “You don’t look well, either.” So Fayne yelled out to Chris, “Ring the ambulance.” By the time I went up to the bedroom and put my trousers and my shirt and my socks on, the ambulance was at the front door. It was only about eight minutes and they were there. Anyway, they took me in the ambulance; took me over to Hastings, and halfway between Hastings and Napier – they wanted a drug for me but they didn’t have any on board and they didn’t have a guy that was specialised in administering it – so we met on the Expressway, somewhere out here somewhere. And the guy ran across the road, opened the door, walked in, and he said, “Woody! What are you doing in here?” [Chuckles] He administered this drug into me, and we got over to the hospital over here and they took me into the ICU [Intensive Care Unit] Ward or whatever it’s called; and this doc[tor] comes up and he looks at me. I said, “Gidday, John.” And I’d done a whole heap of work for him and his wife at their house in Hastings about four months before; [chuckle] and he was the doctor on duty when I was there. Anyway, they gave me all these tests, and ran me through this and ran this. When they called the ambulance [it] would’ve been about seven o’clock in the morning, and at half past twelve I was on a plane to Wellington. Yep, and at six o’clock that night I’m sitting up in bed having my tea. And they put a couple of stents in my heart; about half past seven that next night I was on a plane back to Napier. So within probably twelve hours from picking me up at home I was down in Wellington and had the operation done. Yeah. Couldn’t work for a month; couldn’t drive my car for a month, that was the worst part. If I wanted to go anywhere, Fayne, [chuckle] my wife, had to drive me. [Chuckle]

It’s not fun.

Not fun, no. But my brother, George, he’s had numerous heart attacks. He’s had the triple bypass; you name it, George has had it.

Anyone else in the family, like your parents?

No, no. No, they never had … mind you, all my uncles died in their early sixties, and they all died of heart failure, so it’s in the family. Yeah. But my brother, George, he said to me, “You’ve beat[en] the bullet.” He said, “You’ve gone until you’re seventy-five or something and you haven’t had any problems with your ticker.” Whereas George, he’s had numerous heart attacks and things, but he’s the oldest living male Woodham, of all the uncles and aunties and … yeah. He’s eighty-seven. Yeah.

That’s a fair age.

Ooh yeah, he’s the oldest living male. So when he dies, I’m going to be the oldest. Yeah.

I played in the Boys’ High First XV in 1961, and I only went back that year to play rugby. I was a useless scholar, but I only went back because I was in the Second XV the year before, and I thought, ‘If I go back next year for one more year, I’ll get in the First XV’, which is what I did. And in 1961 after I left school I worked at the Herald-Tribune in Karamu Road. That’s where James Morgan … James was there. Yeah, I worked at the Herald-Tribune; I was there probably five years. I started in the publishing department with Alan Anderson; he was the boss then. And then I went into the typesetting side of it, where in those days they had old, old machines and everything came out in lead in type; the guy typed on a typewriter and it came out in a piece of lead about so big, and all the writing was on the top. And then they’d have the copy there and they’d type it all out and it would come out in a block, say like that big; and then we used to put it in a machine and then we’d take a copy of that and then we’d give it to the proofreaders. They’d go through every line to make sure the i’s are dotted, you know; and then any mistakes they used to bring it back to us and then we’d take it back to the guy that did it originally and he would do that line again. Yeah, I was there nearly five years.

And then what did you do after that?

That’s when I went to Dunlop Tyres.

That would’ve been a physical job too, wouldn’t it?

Yeah. ‘Cause when I was over in Australia I worked for Goodyear Tyres in Sydney at their Rosehill branch there. We were making brand-new truck tyres. And when I came home I went to Beaurepaires and asked them for a job. [Chuckle] And the guy said to me, “Have you ever worked in a tyre shop before?” And I said, “Yeah, yeah”, I said, “I worked for Goodyear in Australia.” And the guy said, “Oh yeah, what were you doing?” I said, “Oh, I was making new tyres and doing this and doing that.” “Oh yeah, yeah”, he said, “how long were you there for?” I said, “Oh, ‘bout a year and a half [I] worked over there.” “Oh, okay”, he said, “you can start next week.” So I went home and I sent to Fayne, I said, “I got a job for Beaurepaires, the tyre place”, see? And Fayne said, “But you’ve never changed a tyre in your life!” And I said, “I know, but I didn’t tell them” [chuckles] … “I didn’t tell them that.”

Anyway, on the first day I’m wandering around and I’m watching everybody, how they were doing things; like, a car would come in, they’d take the tyre off and then they’d put it on this machine and it would deflate it both sides. Then you put it on the machine, then you take the tyre off with a tyre lever, you know? And I was watching these guys, and the guy said to me, “Are you sure you’ve done this job before?” And I said, “Yeah, yeah, yeah, but in Australia”, I said, “they were more sophisticated than this.” I said, “We didn’t use these machines, they had different machines.” [Chuckles] He said, “Are you sure?” And I said, “Yeah, yeah, yeah.” Anyway, after about half an hour I picked up [chuckles] how to do it. Yeah.

There was a guy came in one day in a little yellow Mini, and I went out to serve him and he said to me, “I’ve come to see the manager.” I said, “Oh – yeah, okay, yep.” I said, “Oh, you want Mr Day”; Don Day, he was the manager. And the guy said, “Yeah, yeah, I want to speak to him.” So I went and got Don; I said, “There’s a chap out here wants to talk to you.” So he went up to this guy, and the guy said, “Yeah, yeah, all under control.” And he said to me, “Can you pump the guy’s tyres up for me?” Four tyres. I said, “Yeah, [of] course I can.” He said to me, “Are you new here?” And I said, “Yeah, yeah, I am, I’ve only been here a couple of weeks.” “Oh”, he said, “I hadn’t seen you here before.” And I was pumping his tyres up and I said to him, “Do you come here often?” He said, “I come here every week. Every week I come here and I have my tyres pumped up.” He said, “Next week when I come that’ll be your job.” I said, “Yeah, yeah, that’s great.” I said, “Well, what do you do for a job? You know, if you come here every week?” He said I’m a garbiologist.” And I looked at this guy and I said, “You’re a garbiologist?” He said, “Yeah, yeah”, and I said, “Oh, that’s great”, see? So he jumps in his car and away he goes. And I said to Don, “What’s a garbiologist?” “The guys that pick up the garbage off the streets. They go round with a truck.” [Chuckles] And he had this huge big name for himself; he called himself a garbiologist. [Laughter] Unbelievable!

And another time there was a brand-new tyre came out on the market, and this guy brought his car in and he said to Don, “I don’t want anybody to drive this car, only you.” And it was a brand-new car, and he said, “Only you are allowed to drive it.” Don said, “Yeah, yeah, yeah”, and he put a set of these brand-new tyres on this car. And Ralph Olsen – he was one of the technicians there – he said, “Come on, we’ll take it for a test run, see how the tyres perform”, you know. And I said, “No, we’re not allowed to.” I said, “The guy told Don that Don was the only person that’s allowed to drive the car.” And Ralph said, “No, no, that’s all right – jump in.” So [chuckle] we jumped in, away we went, way down here, you know, and we came back and we drove up and the guy’s standing there. Yeah, he’d come back.

You got caught …

We got caught, yeah. But Don didn’t know that we’d done a test run. Yeah, so we kind of got told off. [Chuckle] Too bad.

You learn by experience sometimes.

You do.

Ivan, on behalf of the Knowledge Bank and myself I’d like to thank you very much for coming and giving me your time and telling us about your life and we wish you all the very best for the future.

Thank you.

And may you keep on stripping.

[Chuckle] And the same to you, too.