Deaths Of Islands People

Eorge Whittaker

Dies At 60

One of New Guinea’s best-known i respected “old-timers”, Mr. orge Kenneth Whittaker, MBE, 'D, died suddenly in Goroka, stern Highlands, on June 25, at ' early age of 60.

FE gave the Territory distinguished L service as a public official,, dier, member of Legco, leader of ; organised returned servicemen, i in his profession as an optome jt—in fact, few men in a primitive antry could have a finer record.

George Whittaker joined the NG idical service in 1925 and, in the ct 10 years, he led many medical trols into the newly-discovered ghlands, where he was associated times with the explorers Mick and m Leahy and James Taylor.

He began practice as an optometrist 1936; and when the war reached ;w Guinea, he served, as a specialist icer, in many capacities and many ices. He gave equally valuable blic service after 1945, in both pua and New Guinea, but probably s best known in the Lae-Highlands jas.

Mr. Whittaker married Miss sephine Hogan in 1929, and they d one son—Dr. Vivian Whittaker, to has already had a notable career a scientist in New Guinea, Aus ilia and United States.

The funeral, at Lae on June 27, is attended by his widow and his q, and a large cross-section of the NG community.

Mr. Albert Roger A well-known Noumean per nality, Mr. Albert Roger, was ried in Noumea Cemetery early in ne following his death in Sydney yeral weeks earlier.

Mr. Roger, who was the doyen of aumea’s taxi drivers, covered about o million miles during a career read over half a century and never ,d an accident. He was 76.

Mr. Roger spent a good deal of his ildhood at Australian schools and oke English perfectly. But he had e keen humour of a Parisian taxi iver, and with his rotund figure and arkling eyes, he looked like one. ! M’s Noumea correspondent says loger” cannot be replaced. An >och ended with him.

Mrs. W. G. Johnson Seldom have warmer tributes of love and esteem been paid to a de ceased lady than were heard in Fiji in mid-June, when the death occurred of Mrs. Val Johnson, wife of Mr. W.

Granger Johnson, managing director of W. R. Carpenter and Co. (Fiji) Ltd. Mrs. Johnson had been in poor health for some time, and was visiting Melbourne when she died suddenly on June 16.

Mrs. Johnson was born in New Zealand, and was employed in secre tarial work in Suva in the 1920’s when she met and married “Tui”

Johnson, a member of an old established Fiji family. “Val and Tui” were prominent in the social life of Fiji from then on; and Mrs.

Johnson was active for 40 years in all kinds of charitable work.

They had five children (Grainger, of W. R. Carpenter and Co. Ltd., Rabaul; Miles, a Suva barrister; Mark, a student at Harvard Uni versity; Richard, a student in Sydney; and Mary, who last year accompanied her mother on a tour of Europe), all of whom have gained distinction in scholarship.

The funeral service at St. Paul’s Cathedral, Melbourne, on June 19, was attended by members of the family who had flown from Fiji, and by relatives and friends.

Mr. J. B. Grove Mr. J. B. Grove, well known in Islands merchandising over many years, died at his home in Auckland on May 28. He was 78.

Mr. Grove was born in Canada and moved to Auckland with his family in 1896. It was in that year that the New Zealand business of W. H. Grove and Sons Ltd. was established.

In 1907, when he was 21, Mr. J.

B, Grove joined the family company, and he remained with it all his life.

He became chairman in 1924. As chairman, he directed a long period of successful expansion, in which the company became well and favourably known all over the Central and Eastern Pacific.

Mr. Grove had five children (two sons and three daughters). He has been succeeded in the direction of the business by his eldest son, who joined the company in 1938.

“JB was a fine old gentleman, and we all miss him,” a PIM corres pondent in Auckland wrote.

Mr. George Hanson Mr. Henry George Wilmore Hanson, a well-known New Guinea “‘old hand”, passed on on June 3.

A planter, he died at his home at Erina Heights, near Gosford, NSW.

He would have been 70 on June 8.

George Hanson was born and educated in England. He went to Australia as a very young man, and from there his spirit of adventure took him to New Guinea about 1922, when the coconut-planting industry was passing into Australian control.

Thenceforward, he spent his work ing life on the plantations there— first as a manager and later as an owner.

In the late ’thirties, when he and Mr. Priebe were the joint owners of a plantation at Namatana'i, New Ireland, Mr. Hanson met and married Miss Anna Ballantyne, of Samarai.

When World War II broke out, Mr. Hanson and his wife were in Germany and they spent the war years there as civilian prisoners. They returned to Australia in 1946, after an absence of eight years; Mr.

Hanson then disposed of his New Guinea interests; and he and his wife settled down in the Gosford district of NSW.

Mr. Hanson took a keen interest in international affairs, and his cynical comments on world trends were not always appreciated by his friends. Yet he was a man of most charitable disposition—for example, it was George Hanson who be friended and cared for “Karkar”

Smith in his last years, when that doughty old German pioneer and planter lost his all in World War 11, and was sick and penniless in Sydney.

Mr. Hanson’s health deteriorated steadily in the last three or four years, and he was taken to hospital when he suffered a stroke at the end of May. He leaves a widow.

Mr. A. 0. T. Chamberlin The death occurred in Auckland Hospital on May 4 of Mr. Augustus Of a Talau Chamberlin, eldest son of an early settler in the Tonga Group.

Mr. Chamberlin’s mother was Miss Amy Parker, daughter of one of the Parker brothers who stocked the island of Eua with sheep.

Mr. Terii Frogier Mr. Terii Frogier, head of a well known family in Tahiti, died in Papeete in late May at the age of 66. As chief of the building division of the Public Works Department of French Polynesia, Mr. Frogier was responsible for building numerous schools throughout the territory.