| Notes |
- DRINNAN, Ronald Arthur (Ronnie) Service No. NZ230768. Born 12 September 1919. Passed away peacefully at Pukekohe on 10 January 2016. Service to be held at Manukau Memorial Gardens, 361 Puhinui Rd, Puhinui at 3.30pm. Wednesday 13th January 2016.
Rodney Times 6 Oct 2009
First boy outside in the morning got the gumboots that didn’t leak.
That was the routine.
And it was why Ron Drinnan of Orewa, who’s just celebrated his 90th birthday, kept trying to beat his brothers out of the house.
"Only one pair didn’t let in the water," he says. "All the others had holes patched with cardboard.
"And, I tell you, the competition for those dry boots was pretty keen."
Understandable, that, in such a big family – mother, father, eight sons and five daughters.
Ron was born at his parents’ Waitoki farm where, by the age of nine, he was often working before and after school – hand-milking and being generally useful – from daybreak until after dusk.
"One night I skipped feeding a calf, nipping inside early out of the rain, and after midnight my dad got me out of bed to do it because it was still bellowing.
"He was a strict man, our dad, who often took the strap to us, but I still think we had the best parents in the world. And as for all this nonsense about no-smacking, well, that’s what it is – nonsense."
Ron’s boyhood days, he recalls, were packed with fun as well as hard work but living conditions were primitive.
The children were bathed outside once a week with water dragged from a creek in a drum and boiled in a huge copper.
"And you’d hardly believe the size of the eels we caught in that creek," he says. "They were gigantic."
Gumboots, leaky or otherwise, were for use only around the farm.
Ron and his siblings walked barefooted on the 5km of rough roads between the farmhouse and Waitoki School.
"But my brothers and I, we often didn’t walk home," he admits.
"Four kids living near us came doubled-up on a couple of horses. The horses would graze in a paddock beside the school and if us Drinnans got out first, we’d nick them.
"Then we’d leave them tied up outside the other kids’ place for them to find after they’d walked home."
Football was also played barefooted.
"We did have shoes and good clothes, white shirts and so on, to wear for Sunday School," he says. "But we had to take them off the moment we got home and they were put away for next Sunday."
During World War Two Ron served in the Middle East and at Guadalcanal.
A bullet wound in the leg prevented him returning to heavy farm duties.
But, in addition to the farm, the family owned butchers’ shops at Silverdale, Manly and Orewa so Ron switched to the butchery trade.
He and his wife Sylvia, who he married in 1946, had two sons. Three years after Sylvia’s death in 1991 he married his second wife, Nola, who died in 2002.
"They were both lovely ladies who looked after me so well," he says. "That’s why I’m still so healthy. That and the family genes."
That genes mention certainly seems valid. Two of his older sisters – Eva, 93, and Hazel who is 94 – can match his liveliness.
And Ron is now looking forward to his 100th birthday.
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1919 - 2016 (96 years)
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