Deaths Of Islands People

Mr. Marcel Hart More than 2,000 people attended the funeral on Raiatea on January 30 of Mr. Marcel Hart, one of the best known and best-liked public figures in French Polynesia, who was killed in a bulldozer accident on the 27th.

Mr. Hart, who was 57, was the mayor of Uturoa (the main settle ment on Raiatea) and a member of the Territorial Assembly of French Polynesia. He had been a municipal councillor for 20 years and deputy mayor of Uturoa before becoming mayor in 1968.

Mr. Hart was killed in trying to hasten the construction of a road to the top of a plateau behind Uturoa, where TV experts were shortly to in vestigate the possibility of building a TV station.

Workmen using bulldozers were within a few hundred yards of the top of the plateau when they came to a spur which made further pro gress difficult. Finding that this was the situation on one of his regular visits of inspection to the road site, Mr. Hart took over a bulldozer him self to try to force a way through.

In making a manoeuvre, the ground gave way under the machine, hurling it and Mr. Hart into a ravine.

Mr. Hart was a grandson of Cap tain John Hart, a naturalised Ameri can of English birth, who had big cotton-growing interests in the Marquesas Islands a century ago, and who is described at length in Robert Louis Stevenson’s In the South Seas.

Mr, Hart left four children, Remy, Franklin Marcel and Murielle. His wife died in 1967.

Mr. Aubrey Hodgson

Mr. Aubrey Hodgson, a retired RN officer who made a return trip to the New Hebrides in late 1967 to see changes in the condominium since his previous visit in 1908 aboard the cruiser HMS Challenger , died in Sydney recently. He was 77.

A lively seadog, Mr. Hodgson visited many of the ports of the Pacific in the early years of this century, and he was present at the founding of the New Hebrides condi minium in 1906. He was then a cadet in the RN and he paraded with the RN detachment in the Rue Higginson for the proclamation of the territory.

In recent years he lived in retire ment at Pymble, a Sydney suburb.

Father Humphrey Courtney

Father Humphrey Courtney, who had worked in Catholic missions in New Guinea since 1951—including Manus and New Britain—died in February after his car ran off a wharf into 30 ft of water near Rabaul.

He was 53.

Sister M. Pius Sister M. Pius, born at Kilkenny, Eire, in 1885, and a missionary in the Gilbert Islands since 1905, died at the Teaoraereke Roman Catholic Mission, Tarawa, on February 20.

A lively old character who enjoyed Gilbertese music and singing and who was always ready to enjoy a “cuppa” with visitors to Tarawa in recent years, Sister Pius was one of the Pacific’s —and probably die world’s—longest-serving missionaries.

When she was seven she emigrated with her family to Australia, and in 1905 she reached Abaiang, an atoll near Tarawa, aboard the On Chong vessel Brunner to serve with the Sacred Heart Mission.

At that time the Catholics had been in the Gilberts 17 years and con ditions were extremely primitive. In addition, relations with London Mis sionary Society pastors, who con trolled most of the Ellice Islands, were strained, to say the least.

Except for spells on Maiana, to the south of Tarawa, Sister Pius spent most of her life on Abaiang.

With other nearby missionaries, she was sent for a period during World War II to North Tarawa by the invading Japanese.

She retired from active mission work in 1963 at the age of 79 and moved from Koinawa, Abaiang, to Teaoraereke where visitors from Abaiang called in regularly to see her.

Mrs. Valerie Bailagh Mrs. Valerie Bailagh, who after World War II spent nearly 20 years in the NG Highlands with her late husband Frank, died at Colac, Mel bourne, recently. She was 44.

Mrs. Bailagh at times was post mistress at Minj and secretary at Mt. Hagen Hospital. Mr. Bailagh died in 1965 and Mrs. Bailagh re turned to Melbourne, started run ning a shop and had hoped to one day return to NG. The couple had no children.

Mrs. Maude Foxcroft Two generations of New Guinea women were saddened at the sudden death, following a heart attack, of Mrs. Maude Foxcroft, at her home in Sydney on February 18. She was aged 72.

Mrs. Foxcroft was one of the founding members of the New Guinea Women’s Club in Sydney, formed to take care of women evacuees in 1941. In 1946 she become president of the club and continued in this office until 1966, by which time the children of the original evacuees had had children of their own.

Although the original aim of the club was to provide a focal point for women whose husbands had be come prisoners of war of the Jap anese or who were in the armed services, the fact that it continued to provide a meeting place for past and present Territorians after the war ended, was largely due to the efforts of Mrs. Foxcroft.

As Miss Maude Groves she first went to New Guinea in 1923 to stay with her brother, the late W. C.

Groves, who became Director of Education in Papua-New Guinea, He was then stationed at Kokopo and there she met Mr. Norman H.

Foxcroft, a radio officer with AWA, stationed at Bita Paka.

They married in 1925 and lived in New Britain until he was transferred to Sydney in 1936.

Her interest was not confined only to the women of Papua-New Guinea.

Her husband became president of the Pacific Islands Society and continued in that office until the end of 1968, when the society was wound up. As his ever-willing helper, Maude Foxcroft met people from all over the Pacific.

By them all she will be remembered for her cheerful and friendly per sonality and her constant concern for the welfare of other people.

She is survived by her husband and by a sister, Mrs. C. Clark, of Melbourne.

Mr. Max Diegelman Mr. Max Diegelman, owner of Norfolk Island’s “A” frame Poly nesian Village, died suddenly on February 3, aged 45. He is survived by his wife Thelma and a son, lan, 13.

Mr. Diegelman, known on the island as Max, arrived in Norfolk six years ago, having been attracted by the business and tourist potential of the place.

Mrs. Diegelman is expected to carry on his operations.