Deaths
pp. 97-98 · Read in the full issue
of Islands People
J. L. Chipper
John Lester Chipper, the Englishman who became a Papua New Guinean and a
symbol of urban development
in Rabaul, died on April 28 just short of his 70th birthday. He suffered a heart attack while making one of the dawn patrols for which he had become
widely known his early
morning tour of the streets and parks of Rabaul to make sure
everything was shipshape.
Jack Chipper was a business man, politician, land and prop erty developer and planner who became one of the main stays of commercial and civic development in Rabaul. In his final years he phased himself out of much of his active in volvement in business interests,
devoting an increasing amount
of time to the civic affairs of Rabaul.
He was born in England in 1910, spent a brief period as a young man in Australia, and in 1932 became one of the many who tried their luck on the New Guinea goldfields. He worked at jobs in Wau, Bulolo and Maprik and at the outbreak of war in the Pacific he became a member of the Allied Special Z Force. He served in small ships with Z Force and saw action in Timor and the South west Pacific.
His extensive business interests began in Rabaul after
the war, and were based on the salvage of wartime materials.
His later interests included tim ber logging and milling, build ing and property development,
plantations, light engineering,
civil engineering, automotive sales and service, trucking and
financing.
Mr Chipper’s politics began
when the then Australian ad ministration of Papua New Guinea appointed him to the Rabaul Town Advisory Coun cil in 1951, and he fast became one of the most controversial figures in PNG public life. He was elected to the Legislative Council and was one of a group of members who resigned in a controversy over the introduc tion of income tax.
He spent 29 years as a civic affairs representative in Rabaul, first in the town advis ory council and then in the bodies which superseded it, the Rabaul Town Council and the Rabaul Community Govern ment. He was president of the town council for eight years and was president of the com munity government at the time of his death.
Mr Chipper became a naturalised PNG citizen at
independence.
L. G. Matthews
In Kempsey NSW, Australia, on April 16, Leonard George Matthews CBE, a former arbi tration commissioner in Aus tralia and Papua New Guinea, at the age of 65.
In 1966 Mr Matthews handed down the historically important decision in Port Moresby which meant that PNG public servants then being phased into the Aus tralian administration of their country could not expect to get the same wages as Australians in the same service. His de cision was based on evidence from a hearing spread over 17 months, and precipitated pro tests and political activism which were an ingredient of the ultimate movement towards
self-government and indepen
dence. Michael Somare, the man who became PNG’s first prime minister, was a promi nent figure in the protests but after independence he appointed Mr Matthews as Chairman of the PNG Wages
Board. He referred to Mr Matthews as a man of ‘ability and integrity whose earlier de cision, although unpopular, was based on the evidence presented’.
Mr Matthews was an arbi trator for 18 years in Australia and PNG and was made a CBE in 1977 in recognition of his service to industrial relations.
He lived in Melbourne, Vic toria, and retired only this year.
He was holidaying with rela tives in NSW when he col lapsed and died.
Bwebwetake Areieta
At Ambo, Kiribati, on March 8, aged 37, after the motorcycle he was riding hit a coconut tree.
Bwebwetake joined the civil service in 1963, and rose to senior posts including officer
in-charge of broadcasting. He
entered politics when he was appointed to the then Execu tive Council in 1971 as member for social services. In 1974 he was elected to the House of As sembly as member for Maiana, and at various times was minis ter for works and communi
cations and acting Speaker.
The defeat of the former government cost him his minis
terial post, but he remained member for Maiana until his death.
Dr Theodore Braun
In Hastings Nebraska, USA, on March 20 at the age of 76 and after 40 years of service as a Lutheran missionary doctor in Papua New Guinea.
Dr Braun, who was born in Nebraska, studied at Rush
Medical College in Chicago
and later in Germany. In the
1930 s he established hospitals
at Finschhafen and Madang in PNG. Both were destroyed during World War 11, and Dr Braun and his wife she was a missionary nurse were held
captive by the Japanese for two
years. The Brauns survived the strafing of a ship in which the
Japanese were carrying 150
Lutheran and Catholic mis sionaries, and later Dr Braun saved the life of an injured
priest by amputating his leg
with a carpenter’s saw.
Dr and Mrs Braun were freed at the end of the war but went back to PNG and con tinued their medical work there until retiring five years ago. Mrs Braun survives her husband.