Ninety five-year-old Maureen Fenton can’t be having with old-lady birthday gifts of soap and talcum powder.
Instead of a present and card, she asks family and friends to give money to Arohanui Hospice.
She’s done it for years: in 2009, for her 80th birthday, she ran a ticket draw using Lotto’s bonus number as the winning number. Forty friends each bought a ticket, and the winnings went to the Hospice. It was so successful she did it again for her 90th birthday, but the plan changed a bit when she turned 95 this year. She’d accidentally thrown away her ticket draw record book when having a clean out, so this time she asked for donations for fundraising instead of birthday presents.
“I don’t need anything. I’ve got everything. When you turn 95 you don’t want a whole lot of fancy soap and what-have-you. I’d rather people gave money to a good cause than spend on things I don’t need.”
The Hospice was the logical place to give donations, Maureen said. She’s had first-hand experience of the help it gives families and friends, when she’s lost friends to cancer and other illnesses.
“The Hospice was wonderful to them, and to their families.”
She’s privately supported the Hospice for years; the Hospice, the Cancer Society and St John’s. They’re all charities providing essential services, particularly for rural people.
“I’ve got a donation box at the (Hunterville) Bowling Club,” Maureen says. “Each year, one of those three gets the donations. The 2023-24 season was the Hospice’s turn.”
The club held a special tournament, inviting bowlers from near and far to complete for the Maureen Fenton Trophy. Club patron Maureen is a life member of the bowling club, and has coached and umpired as well as played. The Club gave proceeds to the Hospice.
Maureen has been a community fundraiser all her life. She’s lived in Hunterville for 50 years; coming to the village as the wife of policeman Bob Fenton. She was a leader in fundraising to improve Hunterville’s town centre; the village’s iconic concrete sheep and attractive street planting are a testament to her work.
She does it because she understands the importance of strong communities. People have to look after each other, need to have things in common, or everyone suffers in the long run. She was recognised for her services to the community in 2013, when she was awarded the Queen’s Service Medal.
Her appreciation of the need for strong communities came through her work with the police, and not just as a policeman’s wife. Maureen joined the New Zealand police in 1957, one of the second intake ever of women into our country’s uniformed force. She was one of eight women, training at Trentham Police College, with about 100 men.
In those days, there was a bit of resistance to women joining the police. It wasn’t a safe or proper job for women, according to the social mores of the 1950s. But Maureen, who grew up in Bainesse and Palmerston North with a police sergeant for a next-door neighbour, decided early that she wanted to be a policewoman, and persisted until she succeeded. One early hurdle during her interview was her height.
“They said I might not be tall enough, so I stood on tiptoe when I was measured.”
On graduation, she was sent with three other women to work in Auckland.
“I remember we women weren’t allowed to drive the police cars, and things like that. The men were not at all keen on having women working with us, but we proved our worth.”
She handled a lot of inquiries and learned to walk foot patrols. And women police officers were always needed to help distressed women and children at big, crowded events. She moved to the detective branch of policing for her final year.
“I loved the work, the variety of it. I was six years in uniform… left when I got married. That was what happened then,” she said. “I think there’s only a couple of us still alive from our 1957 intake.”
These days, Maureen is still busy in the community. As well as the bowling club, she’s a past president and a life member of the Hunterville Returned Services’ Association. She keeps fit each week at Age Concern’s exercise classes — “they came to Hunterville eight years ago” — and keeps her brain busy with mahjong.
Asked how she’d celebrate her 100th birthday in five years time, Maureen laughed. There’s no doubt that she’ll do something for the community, and helping the Hospice will be at the head of the line.
