One-time Raglan Chronicle columnist Ian McKissack has had his say right to the end.
The old English seadog turned academic, wordsmith and letter-writer told his family a few years back his goal was to reach the age of 90 – and so he did, by a few months.
One of Ian’s sons, Nick, contacted the Chronicle wondering if the community his father had felt most at home in – having been something of a globetrotter in his day – might want to know of his passing late last month.
Ian left town a little reluctantly six or so years ago, headed for a retirement village in Waikanae on the Kapiti coast to be nearer to family. But the 18-odd years he spent in Raglan were “some of the happiest of his life”, Nick told the Chronicle, “and the house in Cambrae Rd was the longest he ever lived in one place”.
A self-confessed loner who had a ginger cat called Lionel for company, Ian wrote regular opinion pieces that became something of an institution in the Chronicle. It made him feel part of the community, he once said, and he was often stopped in the street to chat some more.
Ian became so well known around town he even ended up on the cover of the Chronicle himself back in 2011.
Ironically, it was a letter Ian wrote to distinguished Raglan professor James Ritchie – in answer to an advertisement for a psychology lecturer at Waikato University – that first brought him to New Zealand. Ian had ditched ships for academia, lecturing in Glasgow then in Ghana, well before taking up this new posting.
But it wasn’t until much later – after visiting an old student of his, and later prominent artist, Wanda Barker in Raglan – that Ian decided to settle here. Musician Dave Maybee and lawyer Jon Webb were among other friends and former students of his around town at the time.
Apart from his Chronicle columns and some opinion pieces in the Waikato Times over the years, Ian was involved in a local writers’ group and also volunteered downtown at Trade Aid for a time. And he had a little trailer sailer at Lorenzen Bay in which he used to go fishing.
Ian leaves behind four sons in all, and many grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
“So he stays with us through all these people,” says Nick with some consolation.
Edith Symes
