Hi Abbigail,
I asked Grandpa Francis to write a short biography of your Grandma Heather to share with you. I've edited and added to it. Have a read.
Love, Dad
Heather Young
June 1940 - April 2017
The Childhood Years
Heather was born in Invercargill, the southernmost city in New Zealand. She was the first child of Stanley and Hilda; the house where she first lived still stands. Before she turned two, her parents relocated to Christchurch where her younger brother, Neil, was born. They lived in the Papanui area to begin with, which was quite rural in those days. Eventually they bought a new home on Ascot Avenue in North Beach close to the sea. The house is still there.
She went to the New Brighton Primary (Elementary) school, and then to Avonside Girls High School. Segregated high schools were the norm in New Zealand in those days. There were only three career choices for girls at this time: nursing, teaching or secretary/typist. Avonside School catered for the latter two. (Sadly, the school buildings were demolished after the Christchurch earthquakes in 2014.)
Heather biked from her home to high school, which took about 30 to 40 minutes one way, depending how strong the headwind was. She owned a horse called Gypsy while she was at school, and had to work on Saturdays at the Woolworth’s five-and-dime store in New Brighton to earn money for the horse’s keep. She would ride Gypsy along the beach or through the pine plantations. Heather also belonged to the North Beach Lifesaving Club.
After graduating from high school, Heather enrolled at Canterbury University College, University of New Zealand, and obtained a BA, majoring in History and Early English Language Studies. To support herself, she became a cub reporter with the Christchurch Star newspaper, but she suffered bad migraines due to her poor eyesight and the stress of the job. (Heather suffered migraines throughout most of her life, generally brought on by periods of high stress.) Glasses corrected her vision problem. Her parents offered to support her for her remaining time in College, but she continued to edit the children’s page in the Saturday paper under the pseudonym Aunt Hazel.
Late in the 1950's, Heather met Francis at a party: there was an instant attraction. Within a few months Francis had left Christchurch to take up his first job in Petone, Wellington. But they continued to write letters to each other, and soon Francis came down to Christchurch to propose. They were married in Christchurch in July 1962.
Three Years in London
A week later they were on the passenger ship SS Rangitane steaming to England for a three-year stay in London where Francis was studying for a PhD in Chemistry.
Francis had a scholarship of £500 which was enough to live on in London in the early 1960’s, but to explore Europe as they wanted, they needed additional funds. Heather went looking for work and found a job in the Brixton Public Library in south London. It was basically an entry-level job on the checkout desk (no computers in those days). Heather decided to enrol in a library course, and within a year she had a new qualification: Associate of the Library Association. This led to a job as the librarian in the Department of Botany and Zoology at Imperial College where Francis was studying. In the basement she found the papers of Thomas Huxley, a prominent 19th century biologist forgotten and neglected. She cleaned and organised the collection and catalogued it.
Outside work they explored London, the British Isles, and various countries in Europe, learning about history, art, and cultures. In 1965 they returned to NZ where Warwick and Helen were soon born.
A New Life in the USA
In 1969 the Young family set off travelling again. This time to Chicago, where Francis planned to spend two years at the leading laboratory in his chosen branch of chemistry: Portland cement. They were then planning to return to NZ, but things changed at the end of the first year: Francis was offered an appointment to set up a laboratory for cement research at the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana (C-U), a two-hour drive south of Chicago.
And Urbana is where our family stayed for 30 years; and where Warwick and Helen grew up. They both went to University there, in the Department of Fine Arts.
Meanwhile, Heather made many friends in the community because she was always a people person. Also, she got involved in environmental activities at a time when interest was just beginning to expand. As a family, we helped organise the first celebration of Earth Day in C-U in 1970. Then Heather became a founding member of HIPS (Households Involved in Pollution Solutions) and helped to organise recycling drives. An environmental centre was set up under the auspices of the Urbana Park District in a disused school building; Heather was a regular volunteer there and organised a reference library.
When a new park was being developed, Heather persuaded the Park District to start up an organic gardening program that allowed people and families to tend their own garden plots during the summer. It was an instant success, and in a few years was expanded. With the help of a new gardening buddy, Heather built a herb garden that marked the beginning of the Herb Society of Champaign-Urbana. A new, bigger garden was later built at Meadowbrook Park; a memorial seat resides there to salute Heather’s contributions.
A New Vocation
Heather began to teach courses on herbs and gardening, and decided she needed to learn about soil science. She went to the local Community College where a course in Soil Science was offered, but to take it she had to pass courses in Chemistry and Math. She was on her way to studying Horticulture, and at the age of 40 she was an undergraduate again in the University of Illinois. She took her BS degree with honours and then did an MS in Extension Education. This was the result of helping to set up a program with the University Extension Service called Master Gardeners to teach local people the scientific basis of home gardening so that they could offer advice about local gardening (e.g. plant identification, pest and disease control, and so on).
Heather was asked to co-chair a task force to select a new home for the local community office of the Extension Service. She and her co-chair took this seriously, and spent countless hours identifying potential buildings and recommending the best options. However, their report was totally ignored by Champaign County politicians, who crafted a sweetheart deal with the Farm Bureau to locate in their new local headquarters on the far western edge of town. This cynical ploy, accompanied by no acknowledgement and appreciation of her hard work, was too much. Heather had had enough; she relocated to New Zealand to live at the property that she and Francis had bought as a possible retirement spot.
Retirement in New Zealand
In 2000 Francis took early retirement. He joined Heather to settle on their lifestyle block at 474 Matahui Road outside Katikati, a small rural township near Tauranga. There the two of them set about creating Heather’s dream of a country garden of three acres. After 10 years of hard work, the dream had been realised.
The garden was part of the Tauranga Garden and Art Fest, and caught the eye of the editor of New Zealand Gardener magazine. The publication chose Heather as one of “[our] nation’s 15 most passionate gardeners” in 2008. She won prizes that included a stainless steel garden spade.
Heather found time to found the Katikati Herb Society. She also helped resuscitate the ailing Herb Federation of NZ, taking on the role of editor of herbnews, the Federation’s news letter. She and Francis took gardening tours to Europe, including England (which included the famous Chelsea Flower Show), France and Spain. In Australia they took tours with the Australian Herb Societies and one of Victorian country gardens.
She and Francis sold their beloved Matahui Road property in 2013 to downsize to a much smaller garden that could be more easily managed by a couple in their 70’s. They moved into a house on Francis Drive, within Katikati proper.
On the last Australian garden tour, Heather was suffering from undiagnosed bowel cancer. The disease had progressed to Stage Four by the time it was discovered; she was not able to have chemotherapy. Heather passed away about three months later at the age of 76. Her funeral was, at her request, a riot of colour, flowers and song; a celebration of a life well lived.
Heather’s ashes are scattered in a few places that she loved: the Tauranga harbour adjacent to her Matahui Road garden, on the compost pile in their newer Katikati garden, and at the Denver Botanic Gardens in Colorado. When the time comes, some of her ashes will be blended with Francis’s ashes and scattered on the Young family grave at Mt View Cemetery in Marton, New Zealand.