Newspaper Article 2017 – Long-serving Girl Guide remembered

OBITUARY

Long-serving Girl Guide remembered

By Doug Laing
[email protected]

Bernice Winifred Kerr, QSM
May 31, 1924-September 8, 2017

A recipient of the Queen’s Service Medal 12 years ago, Bernice Kerr died in Napier last month, aged 93.

Mrs Kerr was recognised in the 2005 Queen’s Birthday Honours for community service, which included several decades in the Girl Guides movement, and commitment to mountain safety, Rotary’s Inner Wheel Club, Meals on Wheels, Neighbourhood Support, and retired people’s movement Probus.

When named a QSM recipient she told Hawke’s Bay Today: “I just like to be involved.”

Her major satisfaction had come from seeing the success achieved by many of the girls she had worked with within Girl Guiding New Zealand, which dated back well over half a century.

Her involvement in the Girl Guides movement included setting up a Senior Guide Company in 1965, being secretary-treasurer of the Omatua Trust administering a camp west of Napier, being on the movement’s Hawke’s Bay executive for more than 25 years, and being a leader of the movement’s senior support network, the Trefoil Guild.

She also spent 10 years on the New Zealand Mountain Safety Trust.

Mrs Kerr was born Bernice Winifred Berry in Napier.

Father Les, a painter and paperhanger, had come from Waimate and mother Win emigrated from England in 1921, a dressmaker destined to open a fashion shop in her new home town.

Young Bernice was 6 and at Te Awa School when the 1931 Hawke’s Bay earthquake struck. She started at St Patrick’s School in Station St, Napier, the next year, then went to St Joseph’s Convent School in Nelson Cres in 1933 and Sacred Heart Girls College in 1935.

Having studied through Brabet Commercial College, she was seconded to essential work during World War II and worked for A. B. Davis and Sons Builders.

She was in charge of the office but she also did technical drawing for building plans while many of the men were away at war.

Like so many of her era, she was talented at handcrafts, such as sewing, knitting, crochet and embroidery, some of them legacies of the depression and war years as families made do with what they had.

Having been active in sports, choir and dancing in her school years, she joined the guiding movement with the St Paul’s company in Napier, and ultimately served the movement for more than 40 years, including being bestowed life membership.

In 1947 she married James Rae (Jim) Kerr, who worked for his father in an engineering business in Napier.

Jim Kerr died suddenly on April 19, 1986, and the couple are survived by daughters Christine James and Robyn Gray, five grandchildren and three great-grandchildren.

Mrs Kerr’s funeral was held at St John’s Anglican Cathedral, Napier, on September 14.

Photo caption – ACTIVE: Bernice Kerr enjoyed being involved in her community and served many different groups.   PHOTO/SUPPLIED