Christine Stewart
Ah Nigel. Lovely lovable man, but not without his own sadnesses. Nigel's final year as a medical student at Otago University, 1961, and my first year as an Arts student, we were us. The relationship ended because I was a practising Catholic, and in those days, that was a significant obstacle. We first met on one of the old steam trains which carried students down south to Dunedin, and four of us were stuck in a corridor without seats; Nigel, Me, Brian O, and Mary S. Nigel later phoned me at Dominican Hall, and thus we began keeping company - good company. He was minorly afflicted with cerebral palsy. My only photo of him, sitting fully-clothed, tipsy, in an empty bath, was later removed from my album by my mother-in-law while I was living overseas.
In the October prior to our meeting Nigel had been in a motor accident which killed his fiancee, Lois, who was driving the car back from Alexandra in Central Otago on the day that they became engaged. It was a complex accident, and it still affected Nigel; He was 24 or 25, I was 18, and a little out of my depth. Nigel went to Wellington Hospital in 1962, and we met up again when he came south for his graduation, and I think he was engaged to someone else by then - but he still wanted me to visit Lois's grave - with him, and on his account.
I returned to NZ in late 1974 after a living some years in the UK, and read of Nigel's death. His cousin, a Christchurch anesthetist, told me that it was believed in the family that Nigel committed suicide. It was very sad, as he had been suicidal when I knew him. We know much more about grief and death and dying now than we did back in the 60's and 70's, and a good man dying young is particularly poignant, and I think Lois's death was a shadow which lingered. Nigel and I got on well - walking through Dunedin's cold winters in our duffel coats, talking a lot, going to movies and lovely formal balls. I remember him with tenderness, and think how idiotic that something like religion got in the way, but it did. One of my sweetest memories is Nigel telling me of going to a Billy Graham Rally in Blenheim, at the end of which the evangelist invited people wishing to be saved, to step up the front. Nigel did. No-one else did, and thus Nigel was saved alone...
He had a brother, Peter, and a sister Cynthia, perhaps two sisters, I have forgotten. But I have not forgotten Nigel, and people who knew him will remember him as decent and compassionate - and a great talker - for a New Zealand man - and my sympathy extends to the family who lost him.
Christine Stewart
In the October prior to our meeting Nigel had been in a motor accident which killed his fiancee, Lois, who was driving the car back from Alexandra in Central Otago on the day that they became engaged. It was a complex accident, and it still affected Nigel; He was 24 or 25, I was 18, and a little out of my depth. Nigel went to Wellington Hospital in 1962, and we met up again when he came south for his graduation, and I think he was engaged to someone else by then - but he still wanted me to visit Lois's grave - with him, and on his account.
I returned to NZ in late 1974 after a living some years in the UK, and read of Nigel's death. His cousin, a Christchurch anesthetist, told me that it was believed in the family that Nigel committed suicide. It was very sad, as he had been suicidal when I knew him. We know much more about grief and death and dying now than we did back in the 60's and 70's, and a good man dying young is particularly poignant, and I think Lois's death was a shadow which lingered. Nigel and I got on well - walking through Dunedin's cold winters in our duffel coats, talking a lot, going to movies and lovely formal balls. I remember him with tenderness, and think how idiotic that something like religion got in the way, but it did. One of my sweetest memories is Nigel telling me of going to a Billy Graham Rally in Blenheim, at the end of which the evangelist invited people wishing to be saved, to step up the front. Nigel did. No-one else did, and thus Nigel was saved alone...
He had a brother, Peter, and a sister Cynthia, perhaps two sisters, I have forgotten. But I have not forgotten Nigel, and people who knew him will remember him as decent and compassionate - and a great talker - for a New Zealand man - and my sympathy extends to the family who lost him.
Christine Stewart
