Our Mum "Win" passed away peacefully last Friday morning, the 14th August 2026, at the Taradale Masonic Rest Home & Hospital where she had lived the last three and one half years. She was not ill but after 101 years of good service her body had simply become frail and it gave up.
Her life was remarkable not only for her grand age. Most here today will know her for her violin teaching and services to music in Napier. Raewyn will expound on this aspect of her life later. However, there was much more to Mum than music.
Mum was born in New Plymouth on the 8th June 1925, the 5th of 6 children to Allen and Alice Bent. Both parents came from pioneer Taranaki families and the mountain was loved. Her parents provided all of the basics including shoes and socks to wear to school, which embarrassed Mum as all of the other kids had none. So, she would take them off on the steps of the store across the street and proceed in bare feet!
Her parents also insisted that all of their children learn a musical instrument and Mum was taught the violin by a Miss Dowling, full name Evelyn Love Dowling, who was a friend of her mother and lived nearby. The lessons cost sixpence per pupil. She had a large room across the front of her house which she converted for instruction and called the Stradholme Studio. Her students would perform as the Stradholme Orchestra. Miss Dowling was an enthusiastic and committed teacher but Mum always said that her middle name was most inappropriate as there was no "Love" in Miss Dowling!
I did meet her as a child and I can assure you that she was a right old battleaxe. My cousin Alison tells me that she actually made her tremble! Mum's younger brother was once made to write lines because he forgot to bring his music. She also owned a terrier that would yap incessantly at her pupils and scare the living daylights out of them. However, she was a capable violinist who had won a Victor Harris Memorial Gold Medal for her playing. Mum says she always remembered her instructing with the mnemonic for the notes on the stave "Every Good Boy Deserves Fruit", so that she must have learned something. Evidently, things she also learned, if only through exposure, were a lifelong love of music and how NOT to teach.
However, regardless of the expense of music lessons, the Bent children were not spoilt! Their father would not even let them eat fresh bread. It had to sit in the cupboard until at least the next day. Win's sister also recalled asking if she could have a basketball to practice her goal shooting. She was told that such extravagances were unnecessary.
Industry though was encouraged in the children.
The family resided on Standish Hill just across the valley from the old New Plymouth Hospital. They owned a few acres of land in between and milked cows. The milking shed was at the bottom of the hill and Mum would wind a wire winch to bring buckets up to the top to distribute to customers. She also would churn the cream by hand and learned how many turns it would take to turn to butter.
She also tended bees, made her own beekeeping suit, and extracted the honey from the comb.
Her mother was a most charitable lady who assisted particularly with the Red Cross, earning a British Empire Medal for that. In addition she was a great help settling refugees in New Plymouth and assisting with prisoner rehabilitation. Mum did relate how she would sometimes play her violin for a prisoner concert. A little of this charitable environment undoubtedly rubbed off on Mum.
Mum attended New Plymouth Central Primary School and New Plymouth Girls High School. She enjoyed some subjects and was comfortable in and good at maths but struggled with Latin and hated it, seeing no point in a dead language. This dismayed her mother who had been school dux and thought Latin so wonderful because it allowed her a greater understanding of English words. But Mum's aversion to ancient dogma and ivory tower learning was lifelong.
Mum led a physically active life in her youth and won a cup at school for swimming. She would also ride her bicycle all the way from New Plymouth, through Egmont Village to the Park entrance on Egmont Road, a distance of 20 km. There she would wait for her younger brother to come on his motorbike and he would tow her up the mountain to the Mountain House. She and her sister summited the mountain more than once. At times they would use crampons and carry an ice axe. It was more mountaineering than hiking.
During WWII Mum became what was called a "land girl". She would ride her bicycle daily to a dairy farm on Mangorei Road to assist the owner whose sons were away fighting. She enjoyed the experience but it also exposed her to some realities and limitations of rules and regulations. The government had insisted on sterilization of milk through pasteurisation. The farmer was required to have a suitable tank for this and it was always available to show the inspectors. But customers preferred unpasteurised milk and it was never used!
In 1944 she commenced Nursing Training at the old New Plymouth Hospital adjacent to their home. She says the only other career option was school teaching. She chose nursing and after 3 years graduated with a "Hospital Certificate", becoming a Registered General Nurse from the beginning of 1947. She was appointed a night-supervisor at the same hospital and got in the habit of staying awake every night, even if not on duty, and sleeping during the day as that was easier than trying to adapt to changing sleep patterns.
In 1949 she moved to Auckland to undertake a six-month maternity training course, becoming a Registered Obstetrics Nurse from the beginning of 1950.
In late 1949 she applied for a role as Tutor sister at Dunedin Hospital and was surprised to be appointed. The location gave her a golden opportunity to develop her love of tramping. She had previously made trips to the South Island to hike the Haast Pass, just a foot track at the time, and she was now able to indulge in many multi-day expeditions into Fiordland and the West Coast. Tramping in those days involved hobnailed boots, A-frame packs, and carrying all food and cooking gear. On one occasion she walked 20 miles over rough tracks to seek help after a member of their party fell and broke his leg. Tramping was not for the faint-hearted but Mum loved it.
Her nursing skills came to the fore on one trip over the Southern Alps to Jackson Bay. There they found a fisherman who had crushed his finger in some machinery and it was turning gangrenous. Bad weather prevented the boat from taking him to a hospital and there was no road. But Mum was always prepared and carried a syringe of morphine in her first aid kit. She and her nursing companion broke into a local house to sterilise equipment and she amputated the man's finger with a razor blade! Fortunately, the house owner did not call the police. Instead, he married Mum's companion and took Mum and friends on a boat expedition to Doubtful Sound. Those friends included her sister Ruth and our Dad.
Mum had met Dad through what had seemed like a disaster. She and her nursing companion were returning from one of her tramping trips on the West Coast and the bus did not come. They learned that the buses were on strike! But a ride was arranged for them with a regular tanker driver who hid them under tarpaulins as he was not supposed to carry passengers. He got them back to Christchurch and put them on a train back to work in Dunedin just in time for their shift start. But he must have been duly impressed by these hardy girls as he invited Mum to visit his wife and family later and his best friend Roslee Bickerstaff was also there! The rest is history.
Mum and Dad were married in New Plymouth on 11 May 1953 and they settled in Napier, after a honeymoon at the old Waikaremoana Lake House.
Dad owned a property just below the old Napier Reservoir but Mum was always risk averse and was afraid that the reservoir might burst in the night and wash them down the hill. So they moved into the old family home in Enfield Road where, years later, Mum would hold her lessons. It was the house in which Dad had been born in, and in which he also later died. It had been gifted to his parents on their wedding in 1912. Half of the street was inhabited by Dad's Exeter relatives and his brother and our cousins lived little more than 100m away on the road opposite. So, it must have been full immersion for Mum.
But Mum was always an independent woman and our household was very egalitarian. Mum operated her own bank accounts and I was often asked at school "Who wears the pants in your house?" Dad liked to eat a cooked breakfast but Mum told him after their marriage that if he wanted a cooked breakfast he was welcome to one but he would have to cook it himself. And he did!
After marrying, Mum largely abandoned her nursing career and her studies at Otago University. Initially she did do some relieving nursing at Napier Hospital where one of her friends was the matron. I can recall being taken by Dad to his classroom at Te Awa Primary School for the day, while this happened. I didn't mind. His pupils fussed over me and I got to use the playground equipment. But Mum still retained her knowledge and had a sharp perception and diagnostic skills. She correctly diagnosed meningitis in a local child after the family doctor said it was just a cold that the child would get over. She also saved my life after recognising diptheria on top of a measles infection. So, her nursing skills were always part of our lives growing up. However, her early years in Napier were largely spent child-rearing.
I do recall her attending woodworking night classes in the 1950s at Napier Boys High School. Her father had been an undertaker and she had helped him build coffins in their basement. She noted with interest how he would make a partial cut in the wood to bend and shape it at the shoulder. Through helping him she developed a love for woodworking and its practical skills. At night classes she made a couple of nice stools and a side table for the telephone. All had nice curved legs and looked very professionally made. She even made cross-stitch tops for the stools. They still exist in our house.
In 1962 an unexpected opportunity arose for Mum. A music teacher friend was going on holiday and asked if it was OK if Mum relieved for her. Mum did such a good job that the old Hawkes Bay Education Board offered her a regular part-time job teaching the violin after school in Napier primary and intermediate schools. At last Mum had a job that she loved, not just a job as a career.
This role largely defined our Mum as we were growing up. Raewyn will elaborate on her violin teaching shortly but we remember the Mum who would be teaching violin somewhere after school most days of the week and also on Saturday mornings. She would always prepare the evening meal beforehand and I was given the onerous task of turning on the wall switch at an anointed hour. Some of my siblings apparently were deemed more capable and were also asked to peel the potatoes but Mum never shirked home duties. Her teaching was done on top!
But she was not content to simply teach. She would organize annual concerts in which her students played. These were largely for the benefit of the students and their parents. They were always a big event at the end of each year but were never a commercial venture. I recall her becoming most indignant after she received a letter from a copyright owner after the title of one of their pieces was included in one of the concert programmes. She refused to pay and replaced it!
Later, she developed an interest in the Suzuki method of teaching and switched to using it. She became very involved in the NZ Suzuki Institute and was made a Life Member. In the 2019 New Years Honours she was rewarded with a Queen's Service Medal for her "services to music education". Her family know how much work she had put in and were thrilled for her.
Although violin was her passion and she said that music was her life, she did have other interests.
She was an avid photographer and member of the Napier Camera Club. Her interest developed in her childhood with a Brownie Box camera and she had also developed her own photos. But she had an eye for a good picture and today's program uses as background a photo she took of Peter's Pool near Franz Josef Glacier. She did win a small prize for it and was asked to sell it to a commercial organization but she did not want to lose the copyright. Fortunately, that means we have not had to pay a royalty.
Like many of her generation she would knit woollen jumpers and gloves. But simply knitting did not satisfy her so she took up spinning also. She had a spinning wheel and would spin her own wool and knit it into garments. These became almost a family trademark as all of her children were made one and she often wore one herself.
She also developed an interest in cake decorating. She made the wedding cake for Lois and my wedding, as well as Dave and Jo's. There is a photo album at home with photos of dozens of cakes she iced and decorated for other people also.
Mum always liked practical skills. I even recall her making soap in the old copper in our washhouse.
Late in life, she taught herself how to use a computer, send emails, and make birthday cards, and write and print documents, often for her music. She even joined SeniorNet and became one of their tutors.
Mum had never travelled overseas until her 50s, and had no interest in so doing, but children and grandchildren overseas changed that. Our parents ended up catching a travel bug, joining Servas and the Friendship Force, and made many overseas trips to visit people and they hosted dozens from overseas who came to stay with them.
Until Mum was 97, she continued living in her own home. But after a fall and becoming immobile she moved into the Masonic Rest Home and Hospital where she received fantastic Care. In many ways it was a blessing as she was no longer able to climb into her bed without assistance and she would sometimes have a fall and lie on the floor for hours waiting for David to visit and pick her up -- she being too afraid to use the alarm around her neck in case they carted her away. But with her final fall she did have the sense to know she was injured and she did use the alarm. It was a relief for us that she now had 24x7 care. After such a busy life she deserved to be cared for and her final years were comfortable ones.
All of her children, myself, Stewart, Margaret and David are so proud of her rich life and many contributions.
We will miss you Mum!