Stewart Matthews
David Jack gave a eulogy for Stewart who died on 5 June 2026.
Stewart would have been delighted to have been at this meeting, particularly with so many young faces. Stewwartuart, sadly, died on Friday. He joined Penrose Rotary in 2004 so he was part of our Penrose organization for 20 years.
When we integrated with Newmarket, he took the decision to become an honorary member, but as an active member for Penrose, he would be especially remembered as a very humorous sergeant.
That's one of the positions we had for many years in those days, as well as a very generous member who never failed to take a table at a fundraising dinner, or to put a prize up of a lunch at the squadron, which he would chair, and then take everybody around and show them the America's Cup, and the various trophies.
His obituary described him as one of nature's characters, and he was very much that. Many of us came across Stuart in the mid 70s when we were cadets or young managers at AHI. He was an export manager for Fisher Roofing, as it was in those days, and so did a certain amount of travel into the Middle East. He also worked with a number of people like Lew Fisher, who sponsored, who built, actually, and the Spirit of Adventure, so it was no surprise that Stuart was also a keen yachty who was a crew on Fidelus. If you have a look, it was one of very sleek scoops slipped for crew by Jim Davin. He competed in the Sydney Hobart race.
There's a number of stories about Stuart, and a couple I'll just share briefly. One of them relates to one of the boats, I'm not sure whether it was for Dallas or not, heading off on Christmas Eve, either to the Bay of Islands race or across the Sydney Hobart, and Stuart went down to farewell the boat off, and next thing his wife, Alison, knew was there was a message to say sorry, the boat is under crewed he wouldn't be home for Christmas, if you wouldn't mind, he's crewing on a very important race, (editors note - it was probably a race to Kerikeri that the RNZYS used to run as Stewart would have had to have ducked accross to Australia to do the fairwelling!)
Stewart was very strong stalwart of Auckland Grammar. Within the Penrose club there were number of people who attended Kings College and a number who attended Auckland Grammar related, and soon as there was a rugby match, there would be much discussion.
Stewart was an export manager for AHI and travelled the world selling things. He was involved in Abu Dhabi back in the 1970s. Recently, he said to me, we just didn't understand what was required, so we pitched him off in a suit and white shirt and tie, and samples of Fischer roof and tiles and cramples of glass and aluminum cuttings, and so on, in a suitcase, and so he said most incongruous walking around the streets of Abu Dhabi, trying to sell his wares. He talked about trip one where he had an appointment with one of the Glassware distributors there, and all the signs were up at first level, and in a mixture of English and Arabic, and as he walked along, looking, trying to find the place of his appointment, that he tripped over a beggar in the street and fell into the pavement, which were all dirt, not ashpalt or anything like that, and so got his great white shirt covered in dust and everything, and eventually found the place, and arrived upstairs, and he said the purchaser felt so sorry for him. She, she gave him an order of a container over the Crown Crystal glass, which was fine until the next year, and it was had to be replenished, and so there was another order that had to be dispatched, and had to get in and organize that as a Rotarian.
He was really remembered for the zest he brought to us as sergeant. We had a particular scheme where we raised money by people bringing anybody that came back from overseas to buy a bottle of Rob from Duty Free, and present that as a prize, which was was raffled every year, every week to raise funds for us, and Stuart was the absolute organizer of the seller, in terms of bringing out bottles, and people always return them, so he had the whole litany, but probably the nicest bit was Stuart's stories, and the memory of him as sergeant was always getting up at the end reciting the various anniversaries for people who might remember them, or if they didn't, then they would be fined. Similarly, finding people we had an Australian, and if the Australians had lost a cricket, then they were fine. If kings had lost at rugby, then those guys were fine. And then Stewart would always finish, I mean, some rugby clubs finished by standing and having the national anthem, some have a prayer.
Stuart always had a story, and he would stand at the rostrum like this, and as I remember him, he would survey the room, and obviously he was working out were the females present, and he would then lick his lip and turn the page over if there was, and similarly he would do another scan, and if there were young people in the room, he would then flip the page over again until he got to, unfortunately, it was his routine sanitary joke, and we must have heard that every second month.
Vale Stewart