The Hearing Association South Canterbury — or as it was first known the New Zealand League for the Hard of Hearing — held its first meeting at the Timaru Council Chambers on July 16, 1952.
For many years the association operated from the Tekapo Building in Stafford St before building their own location in Memorial Ave and opening it in 2006.
The decision to close was made at the annual meeting earlier this year.
Retired therapist and life member Marlene Shewan said they felt it was time to bow out, as the private sector was now catering for most hearing-impaired needs.
"We’ve hung in there for a good couple of years but we could see the writing was on the wall, and who would have ever thought years ago that the likes of Specsavers would have had their own audiologist.
"We’ve got an amazing audiology clinic at our public hospital and we are catered very well for hearing impairment in Timaru. There’s the private places, of course, for hearing aids but I think our own audiology clinic at the Timaru Hospital covers everything
"We can be proud of ourselves and be proud of what we’ve done. We haven’t finished up going under and I think we’ve just stopped because, as a charity, it was getting harder to get grants and everything and it was getting difficult to get people on a committee to run it.
"I feel over the years we did a very good job. We did amazing work, we had hundreds through the door some years. We had 300 members, now it’s less than 30.
"I think we’re all very sad about it closing. It’s the end of an era but I think we can look at ourselves and give ourselves a pat on the back and be proud of it and the work that we did."
She said the organisation was vital at its inception.
"At the time there was nothing for hearing-impaired people. I felt for all the 40-plus years I was here, that they were the bottom of the heap because you couldn’t see a disability.
"Dr James Hardie Neil started [the League for the Hard of Hearing] in 1932 and then it started here in 1952. We were incorporated into the New Zealand Hard of Hearing and then it was converted to the New Zealand Hearing Association and became one of the branches.
"I think when I began work in Timaru there were about 27 branches throughout New Zealand."
She said they were initially under the education umbrella instead of health.
"I don’t know how they managed. It was odd at the time and then when it was changed the head board in Auckland was very sceptical and there were a lot of questions about how we would be treated and if there would be a need for associations, but from that point I think is when we started to flourish."
Throughout its 72 years, the The Hearing Association South Canterbury has provided services such as lip reading, sign language and telephone training, minor hearing aid repairs, hearing tests and has been a stalwart educator around hearing impairment, closed captioning for television and ear protection.
Mrs Shewan said she hoped the association would leave a legacy behind.
"The money from the sale of the building is going into an Aoraki Foundation Trust and it’s only going to be used in South Canterbury for hearing-impaired people that can’t afford hearing aids and those sort of things.
"It’s important to us that it’s all going to stay in South Canterbury, so that after all the work that has been done, we will in a way still continue helping the hearing-impaired here."
The Hearing Association will officially close on December 20, but Ear Health (wax removal) will still continue to operate from the rooms.
