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Patsy O'Shea: Ex-district councillor, now historian and avid genealogist

June 4th, 2012
By David Armstrong

None of the major public events in Patsy O'Shea's life have been planned - not the six-term stint as a Borough and then District Councillor, nor the book she wrote on the history of the tobacco industry, nor the extensive work she's doing now in genealogy. She says they just landed on her.

For one who has led such a busy life to date, Patsy is remarkably matter-of-fact about how she has tackled challenges and adapted to new opportunities, including her latest indulgence - belatedly spending long periods of time in Ireland, the home of her father.

"My life isn't a sequence or a progression, really. Life to me is a whole series of chancing things that happen," she says.

Like many people now in their seventies, she arrived in Motueka in her early adulthood to work for a while in the apple industry, married and stayed here.

Born in Matamata in 1940 and brought up in Bay of Plenty, Patsy (she also answers to Patricia and Pat) suggests her years there were unremarkable, the main feature being frequent moves determined by her sharemilking parents.

She did okay in school (Tauranga College) and gained UE accreditation with her favourite subjects being English, French and history. She says a stint at University in her fifties made her realise that she could have done much better at school.

In those days, the late 1950s, employment was just a matter of walking into pretty much any business and offering to work. Her first employment was as a clerk at the Ministry of Works in Tauranga, because her father worked there.

The move to Motueka - based on a simple suggestion by a friend to give it a try - led to making new friends, marriage, raising a family of four, and tackling the usual seasonal work. "It was all pretty normal for around here at the time."

The first hint of her taking up bigger challenges came in her mid-30s when with some friends she joined a new group starting in town called Toastmistress.

"At the time there was very little stimulating stuff available for women. Toastmistress attracted women because it was more than just a service club raising money for worthy causes; it was a self-development programme in a supportive environment, just for women.

"That led quite a few Motueka women on to various interesting opportunities. It was a great grounding in business procedure for one thing, which I had no idea about, and the personal growth through speaking in a supportive environment."

Patsy also helped out at the usual community groups that mothers with young families get involved in, including the PTA and sports clubs. But her step up to local government happened more through accident than design.

Someone suggested she stand for the then Motueka Borough Council in 1983. She said she'd think about it and on the final day of nominations, with her friend encouraging her again, Patsy thought, why not? After nominations closed, Patsy found that there was exactly the right number of names to fill the seats so she was in.

She did two terms before the 1989 amalgamation into Tasman District. She enjoyed the committee work and planning, and in her second term became the chair of the Planning Committee.

Patsy didn't stand for the new Tasman District Council because she was unable to find out the extent of the workload and the pay, and she needed a wage because at that stage she was supporting herself. And she didn't go onto the new Motueka Community Board because it was appointed by the new TDC, not elected by the locals.

"That told me how amalgamation works," she says bluntly. "Your local people can want something quite strongly but they don't get it - they get outvoted by the rest [of the council]."

After the transition period was over, proper elections were held for the community board and Patsy was successful. But the work was "totally frustrating".

"We had no powers whatsoever. Basically they [the council] didn't want us. We were useless to them, like an appendix. Our recommendations were meant to be taken into account, but they weren't. It was almost patronising.

"We were so used to being a borough council that that probably heightened the frustration. Most of us were former councillors. We were used to making decisions for the town." But she admits that as years went by the community boards have gotten better into their stride and played a bigger part, taking on more powers of decision making.

Through the 1980s Patsy worked in several places including the TAB, Trustbank, Talley's and a real estate firm, but none of them could be labelled a career. In these she gained some competence in using computers, which was to help down the line.

In 1991 she took her first trip to Ireland, and the following year Patsy took on a new challenge. She dropped all her community groups and involvement and moved to Christchurch for three years to do a Bachelor of Arts degree at Canterbury University. "Strangely enough, the town seemed to survive without me," she chortles.

Her degree was in history and sociology, and she did well, topping some classes including political science and showing that she could have excelled at school all those years ago.

She flatted and was among the first batch of students to get a student loan ("my parents weren't supporting me"), and lived on what resources she had. I've always believed in trying to live on what you get," she says.

For a third year paper on agribusiness in sociology she chose as her subject the demise of the tobacco industry. This led, when she returned to Motueka, to Patsy being commissioned by the New Zealand Tobacco Industry Historical Trust to write a book on the subject.

This took about two years, the result being "The Golden Harvest", a solid tome with 1000 prints that continues to be recycled steadily via TradeMe.

For the next 14 years Patsy lived in a large caravan ("more like a nice little flat") in Tasman. In 1998 she was asked to stand for the Tasman District Council.

This time she was a councillor for three terms, through to 2007. By then she'd hoped that some younger people would put themselves forward but was subsequently pretty unimpressed. However, by then it was time for more travel and some serious time spent in Ireland.

While on the council, Patsy picks two programmes as her proudest achievements. The first was being part of the initial drive to bring recycling to the fore by providing the weekly pick-up service and upgrading the Mariri dump to handle recyclable materials. Until then, all rubbish simply went into landfill, a situation which could never be sustained.

Her other great love was the establishment of the new provincial museum in Nelson. It was not exactly council work but Patsy became chairperson of the trust running the project through her position as the council representative on the joint museum committee.

She was chair for seven years, the intense work culminating in 2005 with a grand opening, at which the Maori queen spoke. "It was an amazing, wonderful project to be involved in," she says. "We had a super team, and it was a real achievement. The opening was the icecream on the cake for me."

Patsy also chaired the council Planning Committee that worked on the Resource Management Plan over the 2001 - 2004 term. She says it was exhausting work that just had to be done. In the following term she chaired the Community Services Committee.

She hopes the present scrutiny and controversy about the role of local government and councils will make people more interested in councils. "People aren't! Councils can talk about rate rises, and you could have meetings in every country hall in the district, yet you get the same few people at them every year.

"It's simply no good that people sit at home and get their rate rise and moan, and they just don't bother. Meetings are advertised and there's well-presented stuff with staff up there to answer questions, and six people turn up. Some criticisms are pretty miserable and unfair, but I'm hoping that if it sparks more interest in being on a council or going to meetings and finding out more, well, good!"

In 2008 Patsy travelled again to Ireland and this time was free to spend five months living there. Three years later came another four-month stay, and there were several shorter visits throughout the 2000s. "I love Ireland, and have lots of good friends there now," she enthuses.

Throughout these later years she developed an interest in genealogy, which she describes as "a disease" and "an addiction". Having reached back well into the past of her own family, "I poke my nose into other people's families now".

She's part of the Motueka Genealogy Group, which now is a subgroup of SeniorNet which is becoming skilled in using computers and the internet to trace family links.

Patsy spends many hours a week on this activity now, and has "been known to stay up till very late in the night" as part of an informal global network of genealogy mailing lists of people asking questions and others providing answers and suggestions.

She's also vice-president of the Motueka Museum Trust Board, and president of the Historical Association, which inevitably is closely linked with genealogy. "You can't do genealogy without getting the social and the historical context."

Now Patsy is quite active on Facebook, mainly as a way to keep in touch with her family and friends, but more recently is enjoying posting links to overseas articles and news items that she finds intriguing or enlightening. She is also spending quite a bit of time researching and writing, mainly historical articles.

Patsy's bones are giving her problems with mobility and strength, but there's no questioning her sense of adventure and serendipity and, in particular, the accuracy of her mind and the sharpness of her humour.

 
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