A glance inside the garage at the Officer family’s Helensburgh home would typically find the place overflowing with instruments of all description.
Mr Officer, who worked as a piano tuner and musical instrument repairer for more than half a century, commandeered the garage as his at-home-workshop.
He would often tune up to six pianos a day.
The floor would be covered in instrument cases and it got to the point where the assorted musical paraphernalia began overflowing into the lounge.
Jenny Officer, Mr Officer’s youngest daughter, said it was ‘‘chocka’’.
‘‘We’ve actually just recently, since he died, cleared enough space to be able to park the car in the garage, which is the first time in about 45 years that there’s been room for a car in the garage because it was just full of instruments.
‘‘My brother-in-law used to refer to the lounge as ‘the orchestra room’ because it was always full of different instruments.’’
Mr Officer died peacefully at his home on March 15, aged 86.
His wife of 64 years, Grace, was by his side.
Jenny said her father was a real family man.
A perfectionist, he took great pride in his work and was considered the go-to person for instrument repairs in Dunedin.
It was thought the number of instruments he tended to over his career could be in the tens of thousands, including a pedal harp and at least one sousaphone.
‘‘We would sometimes be watching TV or something would come on the radio and it would be some famous musician that he’d tuned a piano for or done some work for.’’
The late Sir Michael Hill used to specifically ask for Mr Officer to tune his piano for the triennial Michael Hill International Violin Competition since its inception in 2001.
He tuned for the Howard Morrison Quartet and opera singer Dame Kiri Te Kanawa — his work even brought him face-to-face with Kenny Rogers and he once fixed Neil Finn’s guitar before a Crowded House concert.
‘‘He did the Regent Theatre, and Mayfair and all the high schools, I think, the university.’’
‘‘When the broadcasting studios were here in Albany St, he tuned those pianos every week when they were in high use.
‘‘Probably most of the professional musicians in town used him, and all the school repairs and Saturday morning music, all of those things.
‘‘Everything from flutes and clarinets and violins and cellos and double basses — everything you can name off, just about, he has fixed at one time or another.’’
When it came to instrument repairs, his death had ‘‘definitely left a hole in the musical community’’, she said.
Mr Officer was born in Invercargill, on November 1 1939, to Charles and Edith Officer.
He was raised in Invercargill and Middlemarch, attending Invercargill South School, Southland Technical College and Strath Taieri District High School.
He was known as a mischievous and inquisitive boy, capable of doing memorable things.
During primary school, Mr Officer was a semi-regular performer on the local radio station, singing and playing his ukulele.
Around 1953, the family moved to Middlemarch to manage Mr Officer’s uncle’s farm.
He left school as a 15-year-old, initially getting an apprenticeship as a mechanic at the local garage.
‘‘As the story goes: my grandma got sick of washing his dirty overalls and saw an ad in the paper for trainee piano tuners,’’ Jenny said.
‘‘She thought that would be a better job, and so that’s what he ended up doing.’’
Mr Officer moved down to Dunedin and started working for Charles Begg & Co in Princes St as a trainee piano tuner.
He was soon promoted to an apprentice, thought to be the first formally apprenticed piano tuner in New Zealand.
Being an apprentice was an important distinction as it meant he could get a boarding allowance that made living away from home possible.
At one point, Mr Officer was asked to do instrument repairs as an interim measure while the company made arrangements for the instruments to be sent to Christchurch to be repaired.
He proved to be so skilled in these tasks that the Christchurch arrangements never eventuated.
In the 1970s, he took over the ownership of the tuning and instrument repairs department.
He preferred the repairs side of his job to piano tuning as every repair was a challenge to solve.
Mr Officer struck out on his own that same decade as the company ‘‘Piano Tuning and Instrument Repair’’.
He had a workshop in town for a time, moving in the early 1980s to his home in Wakari Rd where he worked until he retired.
Jenny said her father had a real knack for knowing what the problem was with an instrument and finding a solution.
He could do tuning by ear, and for that reason was highly regarded within musical circles, she said.
For a man with such an aptitude for tuning and repairing instruments, Mr Officer was never much musically inclined himself — aside from playing the guitar in his youth and, of course, his childhood ukulele-playing stint on the radio.
‘‘He didn’t play the piano at all.
‘‘The job came up at the right time and he thought it would be interesting.
‘‘He was good at it, so carried on.’’
He did, however, have an appreciation for others’ musical abilities.
Mr Officer met his future wife Grace (nee Pike) at a dance at the Dunedin Town Hall in 1961.
He apparently knew one of the doormen at the town hall, who would let them into the dances for free when he could.
The couple were married on April 19, 1962, at Māori Hill Presbyterian Church.
They built their Wakari Rd house before they were married; Mr Officer and his best man installed the bath on the morning of the wedding day.
Mr Officer’s eldest son, Robert, said his father took great satisfaction in their family home and keeping it working.
‘‘He was a man who could fix anything, was world-class at his job.
‘‘When his family got too big for their house he just casually built on a second storey.
‘‘When he came to visit, suddenly all the knives were sharp, the doors on the cupboards worked correctly and all the little niggly things just worked again.’’
His regular Sunday lunches were also a family institution.
Mr Officer was known by his family for being quick with a witty response; his granddaughter, Ella, said ‘‘he could make a pun out of anything’’.
Jenny said one of the things her father liked most about his work was the people he met.
‘‘Whether it was an internationally renowned musician or a regular person he always liked to have a bit of a chat.’’
Because he worked from home and on the weekends, he would often nip out to his workshop to fix an instrument waiting there for him.
He was a dependable man on whom you could rely for help.
‘‘We always had a really happy home life and were never wanted for anything.’’
‘‘You always knew you could rely on him.’’
He also had ‘‘terrible dad jokes’’, Jenny said.
‘‘One of his favourite things was to, when we were on holiday, when we were little, if there was a paddock full of cows or something beside the road, he’d stop and ask them for directions to make us laugh.’’
Mr Officer retired from his work in 2012 following a heart attack, but continued to do the odd repair and tuning for friends.
He was made an honorary life member of the Institute of Registered Music Teachers of New Zealand.
In his later years, Mr Officer took up oil painting.
He had always maintained a huge vegetable garden; the glasshouse was always full of tomatoes and a big grape vine proved a highlight during the grape season.
He was pottering away in the garden right up until the day he died.
Mr Officer is survived by wife Grace; children Robert, Christine, Adele, Adrienne and Jenny; grandchildren and great-grandchildren. — Tim Scott
