Vale: Fredrick Clifford Grant, 1917 – 2016

Farmer, photographer, father and long-standing Wayby Valley identity Fredrick Clifford Grant passed away recently, aged 99.Fredrick, known by family and friends as Cliff, was born in 1917, the son of William Grant – an Albertlander. He grew up on the family’s 1000-acre farm, which William had transformed from scrub and bush into a dairy and dry stock farm.

Growing up during the Great Depression, Cliff was struck by homeless people who would stop by the family home looking for work and he kept a photo of a tramp taken on the roadside outside the house, for many years. He attended Wayby School before leaving at age 14 to find work at the height of the Depression. He started working in a local sandstone quarry, cracking stones with a hammer for the roads, but soon became an expert in explosives. His son Murray remembers a cupboard at home which was full of gelignite and detonators used to blow up tree stumps on the farm.

Cliff then became a hammer-hand for a carpenter and worked as far afield as Maungaturoto. Later he would use these skills to build a number of sheds and barns on the farm, and helped build a Methodist Church hall in Wayby in the 1950s.

He met his wife Elsie Came when he was 19 and the couple married two years later. Within six years they had four children – Eileen, Bob, Murray and Hugh.

In 1939, Cliff bought the farm adjacent to his father’s land, but he soon went off to enlist in the war effort. The enlisting officer in Auckland said to him, ‘What are you thinking young man, get back to your farm and family, you will do far more good there supporting the war effort than going to war’. On his return, he joined the Home Guard.

An avid sportsman, Cliff played and refereed hockey and became president of the Rodney Hockey Association. Later, bowls became his sport, and he won a number of Northland competitions. He was also a member and former president of Wellsford Rotary.His passion in later life was photography, which he took up on a trip to the South Island. He went on to win a number of local and national photography competitions and photographed a number of weddings. When he retired to Wellsford, he built his own darkroom and studio.

His wife Elsie died in 1992, but to the family’s surprise, he announced he had found a new wife six months later – Margaret Rambaud. The couple travelled around NZ in a motorhome several times until Cliff was in his early 90s.

Cliff had lived at Warkworth Hospital for four years and passed away on June 2. He left behind children Eileen and Ron Trotter, Anne and the late Hugh, Bob and Lorraine, and Murray, 14 grandchildren, 32 great grandchildren and two great great grandchildren. The funeral was held at the Warkworth Methodist Church on June 7.