Gillian Gordon
GILLIAN GORDON
Mataura
For services to musical theatre
Being named a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit came as a "total surprise" for Gillian Gordon, who says she was just following her passion for singing.
Mrs Gordon has dedicated more than 50 years to the Wellington Gilbert and Sullivan Light Opera Society.
"I didn’t realise how much I was doing, to be honest — I just loved it," she said.
She joined the society in 1970 and started off performing in many different shows.
Later she served as the grants co-ordinator and was society president from 1993-2001, and again from 2002-3.
She then moved on to directing and managing the production of many performances, including Iolanthe in 2008, Yeomen of the Guard in 2009, Trial by Jury and HMS Pinafore in 2011, The Pirates of Penzance in 2012, The Gypsy Baron in 2013, The Mikado in 2014 and The Merry Widow in 2016.
Her shows have had a total audience of more than 50,000 people and have supported hundreds of performers.
She remained heavily involved with the society until this year, when she moved from Wellington to Mataura.
Over that time, she volunteered hundreds of hours each year and even supported the society out of her own pocket on several occasions, helping it navigate financial difficulties.
She also "took great delight" in coaching performers with a range of abilities "and getting the best out of them".
"It’s been a wonderful life for me," Mrs Gordon said.
"The fun, the camaraderie, the good friends, the rivalry!"
Jacinta Ruru
PROF JACINTA ARIANNA RURU
Port Chalmers
For services to Maori and the law
The ability to influence the hearts and minds of her students is what stands out to Prof Jacinta Ruru as her greatest achievement, instead of any of her lengthy list of professional and academic achievements.
Recognised for a 20-year academic career, Prof Ruru said she wanted to instil an interest in the Treaty of Waitangi in her students.
Her aim was "for our our students and graduates to realise that they have an incredible amount that they can offer to our country, in terms of contributing to a more just, reconciled nation, and that law has a really critical component to play in that".
Prof Ruru has lectured in the University of Otago’s law faculty since 1999 and published widely on indigenous people’s rights, interests and responsibilities to own and care for lands and waters.
She was the country’s first Maori professor of law, and was one of the first Maori women to be elected as a fellow of the Royal Society.
Ministerial appointments to the board of Te Papa and the Maori Freshwater Forum have followed, and she has received the Prime Minister’s Supreme Award for Excellence in Teaching and an inaugural University of Otago Sesquicentennial Distinguished Chair.
Prof Ruru said her award was enabled by a wider body of work among Maori lawyers and academics over the years.
"It’s an incredible recognition of some collective work a whole lot of us have had over many years around ... helping to create a legal system here in Aotearoa New Zealand that is more just from a Maori perspective."
Leicester Rutledge
LEICESTER RUTLEDGE
Invercargill
For services to rugby and the community
For Leicester Rutledge, rugby was an outlet, an outlet that led him to a different life.
After getting kicked out of school aged 15, he travelled to Southland for a holiday in March 1969, and while there turned out for the Wrights Bush third grade team.
"By the end of the night, they’d found a job for me and took the keys of my car and wouldn’t let me go back to Christchurch," Mr Rutledge said.
Coming from a "difficult family life, getting into rugby ... was an outlet".
That outlet eventually resulted in him playing 113 matches for Southland between 1972 and 1983 as well as 31 matches and 13 tests for the All Blacks between 1978 and 1980, with one match as captain.
He was voted the Grand Slam Tour Player of the Year in 1978, coached the Southland team for two years and has been an administrator for the club for decades.
In 2002, he was assistant coach of the undefeated New Zealand under-19 rugby team and assistant coach of the Italian national team in 2003.
In 2011, he managed the Highlanders rugby team. He became president of Southland Rugby Union in 2020 and is a life member of the club.
After his playing career finished he never set out to devote his life to the game and the people who played it, he said.
"If you’re involved in something you love and you want to give up your time, I just think you carry on really."
The game had given him a great deal, he said.
"I met some wonderful people who gave me wonderful opportunities through rugby.
"I’m indebted to rugby because if I wasn’t a rugby player of the highest level, really I wouldn’t know where I would be."
Alongside former teammate Lex Chisholm Mr Rutledge has also been the face of the Southland bowel screening programme. Within his wider community, Mr Rutledge regularly drives the Myross Bush School bus and created Match-Fit, a basic rugby fitness programme for older men in Bluff facing health issues. He also received the Sport Southland Services to Sport Award in 2020.
Beryl Wilcox
BERYL WILCOX
Invercargill
For services to the community
Helping people and giving back to her community has always been the main passions for Southland woman Beryl Wilcox.
Mrs Wilcox has contributed to community governance in the Southland region for more than 30 years, serving as a member or chairwoman of more than 20 local boards and committees in the fields of education, health, social development and employment.
Despite the huge effort and contribution to the community, she was still astonished and humbled to have received this honour.
"It was so unexpected, but also a real tribute to all the teams that I have worked with across a variety of roles and over many years ... This honour is as much about them too."
During the past decades, Mrs Wilcox was chairwoman of the Rimu School board of trustees and manager of Southland Community College and Youth Services, focusing on programmes and services supporting at-risk youth.
She was also chairwoman of the Ministry of Education’s joint schools initiative funding management group, on behalf of the Southland Tertiary Training Providers Association, for 10 years and was a ministerial appointee to the board of trustees for secondary schools.
Mrs Wilcox also made her mark on Stewart Island, where she lived for about 25 years.
She was a Stewart Island Community Board member and an Oban Fire Brigade volunteer for several years — her contribution was recognised with a life membership for 15 years of service. At present, Mrs Wilcox is chairwoman of the South Alive South Invercargill Urban Rejuvenation Charitable Trust and has been a trustee of South Alive Limited — The Pantry since 2020.
"I have certainly learned and received as much as I have ever given with always more still to do within our communities."
