At 75 years old, North Otago’s George Berry is one of the more helpful community members Otago has known.
The former senior partner at law firm Berry & Co retired from law last year and this year marks his last in an equally distinguished career of community service. He officially ends his 18-year term as chairman of Waitaki District Health Services on December 31, after a decades-long run of service in Otago that spans such diverse areas as health, transportation, farming, property, education, heritage, and, of course, law.
As an example of the breadth of experience the man has, for much of the 1980s Mr Berry was both chairman of the North Otago regional committee of the New Zealand Historic Places Trust and the North Otago District Coroner, two seemingly vastly different roles.
"I don’t want an obituary," Mr Berry says as he sits down with the Otago Daily Times in the Heritage New Zealand Category 2 historic home at Totara that he and his wife Carol have spent the last 40 years restoring.
What he does want to talk about is the "huge" impact his wife has had on his life. She, too, has had a life of service. She spent years "educating the next generation" as the head of English at Waitaki Girls’ High School, in Oamaru. She is chairwoman of the Phoenix Mill Restoration Trust, chairwoman of the Janet Frame Eden Street Trust, and was also the chairwoman of the New Zealand Historic Places Trust in North Otago for about a dozen years, he says.
"She’s been a tremendous support to me."
The couple have two sons and two granddaughters. The family arrived in Oamaru in 1964 and moved to Totara in 1973.
Mr Berry was presented with the NZ Law Kerry Goldstone Memorial Award for outstanding voluntary community service in 2009. He was awarded the MNZM for community service in 2002. It was "a question of stepping up when circumstances give you the opportunity", he says.
That is how he became a coroner from 1982 to 2007, as he explains it.
"The previous coroner was standing down and I don’t think anyone was particularly keen to do the job, and he asked me to do it," Mr Berry says.
"I didn’t say no. Someone had to do it.
"At the end of it, a coroner can make a recommendation to any agency that might be appropriate to try to avoid similar deaths from occurring."
He says there are many areas around the district where highway improvements, for example, have been made as a result of inquest findings. One of his first roles as a director was a four-year stint from 1971 with the New Zealand National Airways Corporation, appointed by the government of the day, he says, because of his youth.
It was his knowledge of the Resource Management Act and his familiarity with aviation that allowed him to be involved in the planning for the Queenstown, Nelson and Invercargill airports.
For 10 years he worked on the Queenstown runway extensions and airport redevelopment "which was highly contentious work with the local community".
"I was not on the side of the angels," he says of his work there in the 1990s and early 2000s.
It serves though as an example of the variety of work, and the high-end work, he has done.
As the son of a farmer, Norman Berry, who grew up on a farm at Waikouaiti, Mr Berry has literally assisted in changing North Otago’s landscape.
Mr Berry was on the board of the North Otago Irrigation Company (NOIC) as a director for stage 1 and stage 2 planning.
"The NOIC scheme achieved what no-one had been able to do for probably 100 years, which is to bring Waitaki water on to our drought-ridden downlands and turn them into absolutely productive land regardless of season," Mr Berry says.
"First, it’s essential to the economic progress of the district, but second, I’ve seen so much hardship and misery over droughts inflicted on North Otago from the time I came up here."
He was at one time the chairman of the Waitaki Boys’ High School board of trustees.
He was a founding member and the founding chairman of the Oamaru Whitestone Civic Trust.
He was a South Island director of NZ Law Ltd.
Mr Berry has held too many roles to list them all.
He was a director of Port Otago for 12 years, and he chaired its "very successful property company" Chalmers Properties — "a terrific community asset that’s owned by the Otago Regional Council".
"I suppose if you’ve been around a long time, you’ve done a few things," he says.
"Look, you’ve got to work for your own community. We live in the age of self-help for communities.
"The days when the government did everything are long gone and we’ve got to make our own communities work. That’s what it’s all about."
As a septuagenarian, Mr Berry rates his own health as "excellent" and he gives the same rating for North Otago’s health generally.
"I think it’s excellent — North Otago’s time has finally come."
And in the new year, while it might not be community service, Mr Berry does have a plan to keep himself busy.
"I have got an unfinished thesis for my master’s degree in law, which I started out in the 1960s and had to put aside with the pressures from other things," he says.
"It has always irritated me that I haven’t finished it, so I’m going to go back and do it."
