Jim Butler: Worker for Grey Power and a voice for community organisations

September 25th, 2010
By David Armstrong

Every good community organisation needs a good secretary among its committee, and both Grey Power Motueka and Keep Motueka Beautiful have just the right person in Jim Butler.

Now 85 years old but still with the mind as sharp as a pin, Jim is also well known for his contributions to Motueka Community Board meetings. Every meeting he not only speaks his mind at the open forum - usually about the failings and incompetence of the District Council - with florid and sometimes humorous prepared prose, but also stays right through the meetings - usually the only member of the public apart from media.

At the final meeting of the current Board this month, chairman David Ogilvie ended Jim's vintage speech with a sincere thanks for his interest and contributions - even if the board did not always agree with the content.

Jim settled in Motueka in 1996, having retired from a career as an expert in radio communications technology. It all began in England in World War II, where he joined the RAF aged 17 as a radio mechanic for the bomber squadrons. That service gig lasted 12 years, and the post-war years were dominated by two missions to the Middle East.

The first tour was as a technician to Palestine, but he spent a lot of time there on guard duty at British military installations. The second tour was for 2½ years in Egypt, looking after the canal zone, which was also a politically hot area at the time. "That was not a particularly pleasant time," Jim says wryly.

Back in the UK and with his contract with the RAF ending, he saw an advertisement in 1954 for ex-RAFers to emigrate and join the New Zealand equivalent, the RNZAF. At his interview, he was told, "Butler, you're just the sort of man New Zealand wants!". "Perhaps they weren't the best of judges," he says now, again with a grin.

So he set sail for the antipodes on the "Ruahine". (Coincidentally his wife-to-be arrived on the same ship three years later.) He started again as a radio mechanic, and had a working tour to Fiji - "That was a great improvement on the Middle East!" he says.

In 1961, working at Ohakea air base, he met Beryl in nearby Marton and they married. They had two daughters, one of whom lives in Motueka.

It was time to leave the RNZAF, and Jim is proud that the pension fund he built while in service has enabled him to supplement his NZ Superannuation today. In order to open up the best job opportunities, the family moved to Wellington, and immediately an opening arose in the old NZ Electricity Department. "I found myself doing the same sort of job as before, with pretty much the same actual equipment but without the uniform," he says. "It was a painless shift."

Family life kept Jim happy and busy. As the children went through school, he began to find interest in working on school committees and PTAs, and then took a position on the residents association. Secretarial and treasury services on those organisations followed naturally - he was good on his old typewriter.

Then came Roger Douglas and the loss of huge numbers of public service jobs in 1985, among them Jim's. But at the same time, the age of retirement was set by Muldoon to 60 - Jim's age at the time, so he went straight onto the pension. "How lucky can you get!" he says.

Then Beryl had a bad accident that severely damaged her ankle. Daily movement around "goat track country" in their Johnsonville suburb became unworkable so they decided it was time to move. Motueka was flat and they had a daughter there, so the decision was easy.

Jim became active in the community almost immediately. Grey Power was only recently formed and was on a membership drive, so he joined and quickly became secretary, then treasurer. This kept him very busy at the time, but he says that Grey Power today is running smoothly with the workload well spread over several committee members.

Another big step in his later life occurred when computers took over from typewriters; as a man now well-used to writing meeting minutes and reports weekly, Jim had to make the move too. Initially he was a subscriber to the early Sky broadcasting service, which at the time offered email services through the TV screen. Then when he was 80 Jim bought his first (second hand) computer, set up to do emails and write letters.

It took a year, he says, before he worked out all the steps involved in miraculously sending his first email and receiving a reply! "I decided I had to join SeniorNet and find out how to do it properly," he says. He did the basic courses but even then, for a while, he was stumped until it was found that he had different programs on his computer to the ones he was being taught at the classes. That sorted, he was away, and gained enough confidence to start other courses and attend other club functions.

"It's so good now that I can type the minutes of a meeting, send it around to other members for corrections, and make the corrections on the same document, rather than having to use white-out or even retype the amended versions on the typewriter."

And plenty of documents now flow through his PC. Jim is also secretary of the busy Keep Motueka Beautiful committee and applies his organised and ever-sharp mind to keeping accurate records of the large amount of work done by that influential organisation.

And he likes and appreciates the work of the Community Board, in particular its democratic and open nature. "I attend the full meetings because I can always catch on to some odd gems of information from the tables correspondence and reports" which enable him to keep track of what's going on in Motueka.

Why spend so much of his time on community matters and groups? "Well, I'm not keen on golf or bowls. They're not my cuppa. My service background may have helped steer me that way," he says. "But it's a way of life. What else would I do with my time?"

He says that once he was treasurer of six organisations at one time. "That was stupid." Apart from the time involved, the risk of mixing up the finances of one group with another was real.

Our interview then lost shape as we considered his pet worries and hates. Most centre on district council matters, including rates, water, the ratepayer money council spends on consultants without signs of action, targeted rates, and maintenance of walkways. But it's not all negative grizzling - Jim also has plenty of workable suggestions to offer. Just make sure you have a spare hour to hear them through.

Jim (John Edward Butler) is a Justice of the Peace and recently received an award from Tasman District Council for Community Services

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