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Bernard Hallard Gadd, 1935-2007
This is a tribute to the life and work of the late Bernard Gadd, the founder and editor of Manukau in Poetry.
Bernard Gadd at his home in Landscape Road, Papatoetoe, 10 February 2006. (Bruce Ringer)
Early life
Teacher
Writer
Controversialist
Sources
Bernard Gadd, father, teacher, author, anthologist and letter-writer, died suddenly at his Papatoetoe home on 11 December 2007.
Early life
Bernard Hallard Gadd (‘Bernie’) was born in Hamilton in 1935.The Gadd family ran well-known grocery store, but the family was also a literary one. The Caxton poets were represented on the bookshelves (rare for the time), an uncle reviewed for Landfall, and the writer Frank Sargeson, who was related by marriage, visited from time to time. The family’s strong Methodist faith was another major influence in Bernie’s later life.
Teacher
Bernie went to Hamilton High School, took an arts degree at Auckland University College, and trained as a secondary teacher. His first appointment was to Pukekohe High School in 1959. There he quickly developed a reputation as an inspiring teacher. Although, as he later confessed, he knew little about Maori culture at the time, he also founded the school’s first Maori club.
Bernie’s first publication was a brief biography of the Methodist preacher, William Morley, issued by the Wesley Historical Society in 1964. He soon afterwards published a biography of the Reverend James Buller, then went on to write or edit a range of widely-used educational texts and anthologies (My New Zealand Senior, Longman Paul, 1973, People are People, Hodder and Stoughton, 1973, Cultural Difference in the Classroom, Heinemann, 1976, Pacific Voices, Stockton House, 1977, etc.)
After Pukekohe, Bernie went to Rotorua High School. In 1971 he was appointed Head of English at Hillary College, Otara, then regarded as a model modern multicultural high school. At Hillary he helped found the publishing cooperative, Te Ropu Kahurangi, which brought out an innovative and widely-used series of readers using language and themes suited to New Zealand students (most of them written by Bernie, usually under the penname ‘Tamati Werata’).
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