Goodbyes can be difficult, even more so when there will never be another hello.
We were saddened recently by the passing of our friend Natalie Carroll. Natalie was born and grew up in Helensville, where her parents Cyril and Eileen Pengelly were very well known, including for their work running the “Why Not? Tea Rooms”.
Natalie was involved with the Helensville Museum for many years in a number of roles. She was part of a small team transcribing the Helensville cemetery records, ensuring that the museum could help people find family plots even where there was no headstone. She was also instrumental in setting up the original displays in Hec’s Barn at the museum. She was not entirely happy about its current crowded state and was pleased to hear we intended to store some items, allowing for rotation of some of the displays. Many people spent a great deal of time reading the short stories and looking at the photographs displayed in a recent World War One exhibit at the museum. This too was Natalie’s work.
Natalie liked displays to have a meaning and some sort of sequence and wasn’t slow to point out if a newly positioned artefact didn’t have either. She also saw the need to retain and preserve things that people didn’t often see and so was a great supporter of the newly created storage area, especially the area set aside for textiles – often forgotten items in the museum’s collection. She was incredibly valuable for her knowledge of the whys and wherefores inthe museum displays.
She was on the Helensville Museum committee several years ago and we were delighted when she offered to come back in support of the current one. She was a much-valued member of our committee and her presence will be greatly missed. We will miss her support, her advice, her humour and her lengthy phone calls. Moe mai ra whaea. You will have a permanent place in our hearts.
Helensville Museum Committee.
