[ad_1]
JOHN BISSET / Stuff
Temuka woman Elizabeth Norton received a Queen’s Service Medal on this year’s New Years Honors list for her services to the Hampden community.
A woman who received the Queen’s Service Medal for her 17 years serving the Hampden community believes the honor also belongs to her late husband.
Elizabeth Norton was “in awe” to learn that she had received a New Years Honor for contributing to the small North Otago community through multiple organizations and activities, especially since she and her late husband Trevor moved to Temuka in South Canterbury ago. more than two years.
“No one was more surprised than me when this happened,” said Norton, 80.
“I am sorry that my husband is not here to share this honor. We were very much a team, the Norton team.
READ MORE:
* Timaru Veterinarian named a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit
* New Zealand’s first deaf MP, Mojo Mathers, included in the New Years honors list
* South Canterbury rugby veteran remembers grandmother’s punch to French star
“As far as I’m concerned, this is for us, not just me. I think he would be very proud and, like me, very surprised ”.
The medal recognizes Norton’s integral part in establishing the Hampden Recycle Center Top Tip Shop, a monthly market and heritage trail map, as well as rescuing the city’s rural women’s group when it was in danger of closure.
She also volunteered for the Hampden Hall committee, as well as the city library, promotions group, 130-year celebration committee, and Hampden Community Energy.
Norton and her husband also hosted a concert at Hampton Presbyterian Church to convince church officials to retain the facility as a cultural center in 2012, and they jointly received the Waitaki District Citizens Award in 2017.
JOHN BISSET / Stuff
Norton feels she shares the honor with her late husband, Trevor.
Norton’s husband died of liver cancer on June 26 of this year, at the age of 77. The couple had been married “very, very happy” for 55 years.
“His passing has been quite devastating. Life is not the same, “he said.
“This is another opportunity to think about him and everything we did together. Our attitude was: you see that you have to do something and you do it. “
Norton was born in England and was 21 when she moved to New Zealand and met her husband Kiwi on the North Island.
The couple’s two sons were adults when they decided to move to the South Island, settling in Cromwell to be closer to their daughter in Queenstown. When house prices in the city of Central Otago skyrocketed, they sold and moved to Hampden, where they lived for about 17 years.
“It was accidental, but we were very happy in Hampden,” Norton said.
“It was a caring community, willing to dedicate time and energy to doing things for that community.”
She said they “didn’t want to move,” but about two and a half years ago they decided to sell because their acreage had gotten “too much.”
“We look at all kinds of places between Oamaru and Timaru. We saw so many houses, and we both liked this one in Temuka. “
The Nortons had been instrumental in creating a Senior University, a group focused on educating and encouraging retired members of a community, in Temuka about 18 months ago.
“It is very popular,” he said.
