Margaret Mary Ough – Eulogy 18 October 2000
Walter has asked me to speak for him today to say good bye to Margaret. I also add Chairman’s and my own farewell to a much loved Mum and unusual lady…..
Margaret achieved almost 94 years of life. During her long and eventful time on the planet she saw 5 British monarchs reign and nearly 20 American Presidents come and go as well as some 16 British Prime Ministers. During her life Hong Kong passed from a Crown Colony to become, 90 years later the new SAE of the Peoples Republic of China. She lived to see the end of the 75 year one party rule of Mexico. She saw the beginnings of powered flight in aeroplanes that were little more than string and cloth kites to the jet leviathans of today. She lived through the birth and death of the League of Nations and the creation of a United Nations - now over half a century old, the end of Empire and the creation of Commonwealth and so much else besides.
She lived during times of ever increasing turmoil and strife, many of which inevitably affected her directly. She began life in a small hospital on Peak Hill in Hong Kong in 1907 in the Edwardian era of a British Empire at its zenith. Her father was a Colonial Government Official and Headmaster of the local Queens College. His pupils included Sun Yat Sen, the famous Chinese revolutionary. Mum lived in Hong Kong when Chinese men still wore queues and women had bound feet. She was about 10 when she went to Adelaide with her mother whilst her Dad continued in the colony. Her two brothers were attending Roseworthy Agricultural College at the time. The loss of her brother Sydney with the Royal Flying Corps in Scotland and her eldest brother Frank with the 43rd Australian Infantry battalion near the village of Suzanne on the Somme, both in the last year of WW1, was traumatic for the family.
Mum remembered her brothers as rather shadowy, remote, but much revered figures. Their names are recorded on the Cenotaph in Adelaide, the Australian War Memorial in Canberra and Stonyhurst College in Lancashire as well as Roseworthy. They were over 10 years older than Mum and spent most of their early years away at boarding school in England. As a consequence she hardly knew them. But their tragic loss set in train the series of events that finally brought Mum to New Zealand. She came via Australia, France, England, Mexico, Jamaica, and Mexico again.
She was much traveled. She experienced coal fired steamers, oil powered passenger vessels, sampans, propeller driven aeroplanes, modern jets (including the Comet) steam trains (oil, coal and wood fired) and diesel and electric trains, mules, donkeys, traditional Chinese taxi chairs, horseback and horse drawn carriages.
Mum completed her education in Grenoble where she added fluent French to her burgeoning knowledge and experience. After her father’s death in 1922 she and her mother moved to England where Mum got her first job. She was an enthusiastic and energetic participant in the fads and fancies of the flapper generation of the 20’s. She loved dancing, jazz and swing and clothes …..eager to break away from what she saw as stifling influences of Victorian and Edwardian custom and tradition Mum lived her early adult life through that post war time full of the promises of prosperity and peace. Yet she remained someone who believed and practiced good manners, respect for others and the setting and maintenance of standards of acceptable behaviour.
Mum married Dad in Mexico City in 1931 to start the next phase in her life. She became a part of the Ough family that had already been in Mexico for one generation with close ties to another long established expatriate family ….the Rules of Cornwall. Life for her then was bound up with the expatriate groups, mainly British, American and German, working in the mining industry in places like Pachuca, Real del Monte in the State of Hidalgo, and Los Azules in Northern Mexico. These were stark, hard sometimes dangerous places, far removed from the civilized amenities and somewhat sheltered way of life she had known in Europe, Australia and Hong Kong.
The depression years of the thirties saw Mum produce a family and live with Dad through those hard times still in Mexico. Margaret became fluent in Spanish. She remained in Mexico with Dad and the family through all the years of the second World War, but separated from her own mother and family relatives who remained in England.
During that time Margaret was much involved in all sorts of fund raising efforts to support the cause of the Allies, including being an active secretary of the local Ladies Guild. I vividly remember some stage show she was in where her role included preventing the ringing of a bell. She was supposed to climb a ladder and hold the clapper…..but during the first performance she had barely uttered the words "Curfew shall not ring tonight" when the ladder slipped and she was left hanging on to the clapper swinging some 4 or 5 feet above the theatre floor. She brought the house done, but fortunately not the bell. Typically determined and undefeated she completed the performance and was involved in several more.
After the war, Jamaica was her next stop. She took Charmian and I to Kingston in 1946 to get us into school. She did this on her own and faced and saw through many difficulties. I have a vivid memory of her coping with rude and aggressive Cuban customs officials in Camaguey. This was a scruffy Cuban town and the last stop for the twin engined DC3 that was taking us to Kingston. Here the officials seemed determined to make life difficult for her and emptied her luggage on the counter in
their search for "contraband"….needless to say they left her to repack the lot, smirking at her discomfiture…….
Mum had never been to Jamaica before and apart from one contact she really knew no one there. She was faced with the tasks of finding and establishing somewhere to live as well as getting us started at school. It was a decision forced by the aftermath of the war and a determination to provide a traditional English schooling and education for Charmian and I. Mum and Dad endured 8 years of separation to provide for our future. Dad had to remain in Mexico to make a living for all of us. It is impossible to adequately describe what the upheaval and separation meant for her and each member of the family. I know that she and Dad sacrificed much and I shall always be in their debt.
During her 9 years in Jamaica, Margaret managed pretty much on her own. Despite the several moves we made through hotels, guest houses and finally a house, Mum was able to provide a sense of security and stability and an adequate platform for living. She coped with illness and home-sickness. She endured a serious car accident, survived one of the worst hurricanes ever to hit the island and cheerfully bore the constraints and frustrations of living as an expatriate in an increasingly alienating culture. She put up with teen-age traumas and thoughtlessness to see us through. She was a most loyal and supportive parent who had much to contend with and succeeded where anyone with less fortitude, determination and courage would have failed.
Thankfully, following her return to Mexico and to Dad in 1954, Mum started a comparatively more tranquil phase in her life. During the next 17 years she lived with Dad in the mining town of Pachuca. They were both able to enjoy the fruits of Dad’s greater responsibilities at work and the family and social life they were able to restore and build up. Both Charmian and I were for the most part overseas, so the family tradition of living separately continued. Yet Mum and Dad managed to maintain the family links by regular correspondence and contact. Mum was meticulous and never forgot a birthday or anniversary…….we could always rely on a regular flow of newsy and cheerful messages from her throughout that period.
And so to the most recent phase of Mum’s life. She was determined to go to New Zealand especially after she had spent a short time there to help Charmian and Jack when Mark was born in the early 60’s. She and Dad finally emigrated to NZ in 1971 when Dad retired.
I believe living in New Zealand has been a happy period for her and a well earned rest. She continued and reinforced her role as a senior member of the family. She has set an example of dignity and good manners. Any family member or friend would always be guaranteed a cheerful welcome and the offer of a cup of tea. Mum looked after her home with great care and was a very very tidy Kiwi. She has always taken an immense pride in her appearance and maintained her standards to the end. She loved her garden, her flowers and her family… She knew how to cook ……, her Mexican dishes and Cornish pastes would entice people across a desert to savour them! I suspect she endured her weekly bridge sessions because she knew other, keener members of family enjoyed the game. She remained determined to keep up with modern life and at the age of 88 even started using a computer…….
What more can one say except that it has been a privilege to have had her as a mother and as a constant friend. I am sure Dad echoes those sentiments for a wife and companion of over 69 years.
hello dear
have a cup of tea
keep your tail up
I promise
Anything you say dear
WORK IN PROGRESS
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