Longtime New Plymouth RSA stalwart and navy veteran Graeme Lowe has died.
Lowe, 76, a two-time president of the New Plymouth RSA, suffered from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and had been confined to his home since December last year.
He died on Thursday, just a few weeks after telling the Taranaki Daily News that he intended to make it to his 77th birthday in May.
Lowe joined the Royal New Zealand Navy when he was 16 and did two tours of duty in Malaya.
It was the early 1960s and the ship had been in the Pacific and up to Singapore and Malaysia, during a period of conflict when Indonesia disagreed with the creation of the country of Malaysia.
At one point the ship was patrolling around Malaysia looking for infiltrators coming in by boat carrying guns and explosives. Two bodies were seen in the water, Lowe said in 2018.
“They’d been shot up. I had to recover them. It was not a very nice job, especially for a young fella. I wasn’t capable of eating lunch after that.”
Lowe’s dad, a World War II veteran, had wanted him to join the army, but sleeping in a hole in the ground didn’t appeal. He stayed in the navy 10 years, leaving in 1973.
Back on civvy street, Lowe worked in pubs and then joined the railways before going scrub cutting.
Along the way, the drinking that had begun in the navy took control.
“Unfortunately, it was my master,” he said in 2018.
He hit rock bottom and ended up sleeping rough in Wellington.
After some stints with the Salvation Army’s Bridge programme at Akatarawa in Upper Hutt, he got sober and stayed that way for the rest of his life – nearly 37 years.
Back in New Plymouth, he joined the RSA in 1996 and became a committee member in 2004. He was president at one stage until he had a heart attack. In July 2014, he became president until November 2018.
Three weeks ago during his interview with the Taranaki Daily News, Lowe said the RSA was still important. There was a comradeship there “exactly like you had in the services, which you don’t strike any other way in civilian street”.
“It’s not like you think. You don’t go there and people are just telling war stories. Far from it. Even on Anzac [Day], if you do hear war stories, it’s not about blood and guts. It’s about the mischief the boys would get up to.”
New Plymouth RSA president Graham Chard said Lowe was a passionate advocate for the RSA.
“He was very upfront about what he felt was right for the RSA.”
Chard recalled a time when the two men were in Wellington to attend an RSA national executive conference. While walking from their hotel to Pukeahu National War Memorial Park, Lowe showed Chard some of the places where he used to sleep rough when he was at his lowest.
“He opened up to me what he lived through when he left the navy.”
As a recovering alcoholic, Lowe’s involvement with an organisation that had a history of bars and drinking was interesting, Chard said.
“He was a bit of an anomaly, but it was an indication of his strength that he could move in those circles and not fall off the wagon.”
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