Newspaper Article 2017 – Dame owes debt to Dannevirke

Dame owes debt to Dannevirke

Rural lifestyle provided solid grounding to academic work

By Christine McKay
[email protected]

A FORMER Dannevirke woman has been honoured in the Queen’s Birthday honours for 45 years of research and policy benefiting seniors.

Peggy Koopman-Boyden, 73, was named as a Dame Companion, a proud moment for her brothers, Clive in Woodville and Geoff in Palmerston North.

Dame Peggy, a University of Waikato emeritus professor, is a former Dannevirke High School prefect who started her primary school life in Ormondville, before moving to Maharahara West.

“We’re pretty proud of her achievement,” Clive told the Dannevirke News.

But this isn’t the first time Dame Peggy has been honoured. In 1997 she was made a CNZM (Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit).

Her grandmother, Evelyn Boyden, who lived at Rua Roa, had a huge influence on Dame Peggy.

“I was the oldest grandchild and she always said, ‘enough is never enough. You were born with brains, use them’.”

“My great-grandmother EA Boyden also signed the petition for women to get the vote,” she said.

Dame Peggy attributes some of her success to the great teachers in our district.

“Miss Kendon at Ormondville School taught me to read and then there was Tom Dunn at Maharahara West School and several really good teachers at Dannevirke High School,” she said.

“Principal Duncan Scott was very strict and disciplined.”

And Dame Peggy said the influence of small schools and small rural communities has been key in her career.

“My father died when I was 16, three months after I left Dannevirke High School,” she said.

“Clive, 15, looked after the farm and I went teaching. I was the academic, but I couldn’t afford to go to university so I appreciate the fact that my generation could train as a teacher at Palmerston North Teachers College and earn a degree at the same time. All my degrees were gained part-time and extramurally from Massey University.”

In her 30s Dame Peggy became involved in research on older people at the University of Canterbury and has been heavily involved in policy and research.

“I’ve worked all my life. I’ve been a bit busy. My life has been full of research and talking about policy,” she said.

“If you give me the choice of doing things the same or different, I choose different.”

In the 1970s when everybody was interested in other “isms”, sexism and racism, Dame Peggy was interested in ageism.

“Research is very interesting, but it has to be practical,” she said. “That practical bent I have in common with my brothers Clive and Geoff.”

Thirty years ago, along with her husband, Dame Peggy set up a private language school in Christchurch, teaching English to Japanese students and although her husband died last year, the language school continues.

One of the most important things for older people is being connected, she said.

“If you are socially isolated you will not live as long as people who are connected, that’s why the Lions (brother Clive is a member of the Woodville Lions Club) and rural groups are so important.”

Chief executive at the New Zealand Institute for Social Research and Development (Crown Research Institute) in 1992, Dame Peggy was the only woman chief executive at the time.

She then moved to the University of Waikato as deputy vice-chancellor and dean.

“Bryan Gould, formerly from Dannevirke High School, had been appointed chancellor. Eventually I ended up as his deputy, so for two people from DHS to head the University of Waikato was really something.”

An illustrious career

Led major research projects for the Foundation for Research, Science and Technology in the 1990s and 2000s.

Recently completed a multi-year programme of research on active ageing.

In 2005 she became the founding president of the Waikato branch of the New Zealand Association of Gerontology, a position she held until 2012.

Member of the Age Concern Adviser Research Committee since 2010.

Since 2008 she has been chairwoman of Age WISE, a strategic advisory group to the Waikato District Health Board.

From 2013 -2016 she was chairwoman of Hamilton City Council’s Older Person Advisory Panel and now chairs the steering group of Hamilton’s Age Friendly accreditation project for the World Health Organisation.

In 2013 she was the foundation board member of the Institute of Healthy Ageing.

From 2001 to 2003 she was chairwoman of the Ministerial Advisory Committee on Complementary and Alternative Health and in 2007 chaired the Australian complementary and alternative grant review panel for their national health and medical research council.

Advised the Government on HIV, Aids, and the cervical smear programme.

Photo caption – HONOURED: Peggy Koopman-Boyden, made a Dame in the Queen’s Birthday honours, was educated in rural Tararua and was a prefect at Dannevirke High School.