Helen Harvey05:00, Nov 11 2023
Being a long-term president of an RSA would seem a risky job for a recovering alcoholic. But Graeme Lowe made it work.
When he was president of the New Plymouth RSA he had a chat with all the bar staff and told them not to sell him alcohol under any circumstances, he says.
“Or anybody else coming up to try and buy it for me. And that worked well. Now and again you get the idiot who thinks it’s funny to try and sneak one over you. I’ve seen it happen.”
So, if he went away from a table for a bit, leaving a half-full glass, he’d tip it out when he got back, just to be sure, he says.
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He resigned as president at the end of 2018.
These days Lowe is stuck at home with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). He got sick last December and was rushed to hospital.
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“They threw me out to go home and die.”
He didn’t. And he intends to make it to his 77th birthday in May.
From his bed, Lowe’s line of vision goes to a picture on the wall of a ship he served on, HMNZS Royalist an anti-aircraft cruiser. In the 1960s Lowe did two tours of duty in Malaya with the New Zealand Navy.
He’s a navy man through and through. If he had his time again, he may not have gone in so young (he was 16) but he’d definitely still join up.
That’s where he started drinking.
“When you’re young, you’re bulletproof. You think. It was encouraged in them days, smoking, drinking.
“As long as you were at sea, cigarettes were tax-free. We used to get a beer issue as well as your rum issue at night. But you had to be 18 before you could draw your rum issue, same with beer. You had a few guys there that were teetotal.”
He’s been sober 36, going on 37 years. It’s something he’s rightfully proud of.
Temptation is always there, especially in the hot weather or when life gets a bit tough. But day to day he doesn’t usually miss it, he says.
“I didn’t like myself at all when I was drinking. I was, to be rather blunt, an a… on a merry-go-round that you can’t seem to get off. I was a slow learner, I went to treatment four or five times.”
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His last stint in rehab was with the Bridge Programme in Wellington. That worked.
“The Sallies sent me out to Akatarawa on the road between Upper Hutt and Waikanae in the middle of nowhere. At first, I wasn’t too happy about that, but it turned out to be the best thing that ever happened to me. I was there close on five months.”
And ever since, he’s volunteered for the Bridge programme whenever able.
It took a lot of willpower to stay off alcohol and “I did everything wrong that they say you shouldn’t do”, he says.
Like join the RSA.
The first time he joined was many years ago when he was still in the navy. But, later when he moved away from Taranaki and lived all over New Zealand, he let it drop.
Then, back in New Plymouth again, he visited to find out about a cruiser reunion he wanted to attend.
He talked to reunion organiser Trevor Wylde, who wanted to know why Lowe wasn’t a member, Lowe says.
“I said, ‘I don’t drink, no point me being a member’. He more or less pulled me by the ear. How many people in here are drinking? It was quite surprising. About a dozen in there were just drinking lolly water. That’s when I rejoined again.”
He joined the New Plymouth RSA in 1996 and went on the committee in 2004. He was president at one stage until he had a heart attack. Then he was president again from July 2014 to November 2018.
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The RSA is still important, he says, there’s a comradeship there “exactly like you had in the services, which you don’t strike any other way in civilian street”.
“And it’s not like you think. You don’t go there and people are just telling war stories. Far from it. Even on ANZAC if you do hear war stories it’s not about blood and guts. It’s about the mischief the boys would get up to.”
Like the time the HMNZS Royalist broke down on the way back to New Zealand. It was the early 1960s and the ship had been in the Pacific and up to Singapore and Malaysia.
It was during what was called the Malaya confrontation, when Indonesia disagreed on the creation of the country of Malaysia.
The cruiser ended up drifting off the Solomon Islands, he says.
“The number of sharks in the water. If you went in there you wouldn’t have lasted five seconds.”
So, they had a fishing competition and dragged in about 90 in less than an hour. Some of them were huge, he says.
Lowe now has a grandson in the navy.
“He’s done bloody well, but I don’t want to embarrass the poor bugger.”
But talking about his grandson reminds him of another story.
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Lowe and a friend were the padre’s cleaners while on shore at Tāmaki, in Auckland, he says.
“Until we found out where he kept the communion wine.”