THE TREASURED YEARS - Gordon Dryden writes to Chris Cole-Catley

lDear Chris,

It's been so many years since, in 1947, a 16-years-young Gordon Dryden talked his way into a copyholder's job on Wellington's Southern Cross newspaper.  And then quickly marched out of the reading room to become its youngest cub reporter.

Even today some of the great memories shine vividly:

*   Dave Ballantyne, on the memorable beer-gurgling day The New York Times

hailed "The Cunninghams" as a classic New Zealand novel of the depression years.

*   Later Ian Cross ‹ back from being arrested with Keith Berry in Panama

for alleged (and, from memory, unproven) gun-running in some revolution‹ as a great Chief Reporter, before writing "The God Boy".

*   Dick Scott as the "Farming Editor": well before unlocking the

long-suppressed history of Te Whiti O Rongomai's great passive resistance at Parihaka.

*    A young Noel Hillard, as a tubercular sub-editor, in the years before

"Maori Girl".

*   Even a young cadet who'd illegally left school at 14 ‹ "and started

learning". Then later producing 22 television programs, and writing several editions, of a book on how to start a 21st-century multimedia learning revolution.

*   And a talented, vivacious Chris Cole as New Zealand's first to turn

newspaper "Women's Pages" into non-fluff journalism that today would be dubbed objective feminism.

[I'm trying to dredge up the name of your Assistant on the southern cross (Pauline?).  But her naivety still kindles a chuckle: in her "subbing" of a speech by Lady Fryberg. The Governor-General's wife had recalled her lifelong habit of writing either a T or an F in her diary when she was "tempted" by something, or "frustrated". Both experiences had continued to occur frequently, and so had her habit. Your assistant's headline:  "Lady Fryberg often T'd and F'd".  As the "stone sub" that night, I drew the lot to explain why that had to be changed.  [In today's tabloids the headline would rate front page 144pt bold.]

Years later I learned that Gordon McLauchlan also worked on the Southern Cross ‹ but it must have been been between my occasional switches to a provincial newspaper to "get the grading up".  "The Two Gordons" never met in those years  But he has since become a warm, talented, treasured and optimistic friend‹and incredibly productive, versatile writer.  This morning he passed on news of your illness.

How much I learned from you all.  And have continued to do so.

Some of New Zealand's historic triumphs in that early era are recalled in a TV interview, linked below, on my own most recent book: a 1940-era Utopian's optimistic glimpse of a future where everything is at last possible (especially in self-learning).

At the end, the interviewer asked:  "What now for an encore? Or something like that.

The response:

"To die young ‹ at a very old age."

Indeed.  We've lived through the treasured years.

Warm thanks for yours.

Gordon Dryden

Earlier report - http://beattiesbookblog.blogspot.com/2011/07/much-loved-nz-book-trade-veteran-ill.html