McCormick's death end of an era

The death on Anzac Day of Don McCormick marked the end of quite an era in Hawera's history.

It might even be called the day the music died when Donald Irvine McCormick passed away in the Trinity rest home at the age of 87 years.

He was a funeral director, a skilled musician and closest friend and drinking buddy of Hawera's late and not always lamented posthumously famous novelist Ronald Hugh Morrieson.

They were both born in Hawera in 1922 and both died there. Morrieson drank himself to an early death in 1972 at the age of 50, three years after his mother died and not long after McCormick embarked on a similar path.

They were mates from about age nine. McCormick joined the RNZAF when he was 18 and graduated as a sergeant pilot just before World War II ended.

McCormick learned piano from Miss Winifred Thomas, played in local competitions and sang in a church choir. Morrieson was born into a musical family and became a music teacher himself. He played violin and double bass hand-crafted by his grandfather Charles Johnson, an outstanding instrument maker.

McCormick and Morrieson played in dance bands together for some 20 years, from about 1946. Both men were talented multi-instrumentalists, firstly playing in the five-piece Premiere Band, Don on drums, piano or sax (his first sax was acquired from an American serviceman in exchange for a bottle of whisky) and Ron on piano, bass or guitar.

They then formed the Rhythm Masters trio and played all around Taranaki, tearing through the night in Ron's nine-seater Hudson, which was big enough to take all their gear.

Later they joined Colin King's eight-piece The Harmonisers.

While Morrieson was secretly writing his novels based on Hawera life, McCormick inherited his father's funeral parlour and furniture store business, then based where Barrie's Restaurant and Bar is now located in Princes St.

The firm buried Morrieson, but McCormick chose to be just another mourner. Shortly after this event, he sold it to his partner Russell Bassett, invested the money and began living off the interest. Bassett sold out to Michael Clegg in 1975.

McCormick boasted to me about his drinking prowess in a published 1988 interview after I met him at the Railway Tavern. At that stage his daily routine was to begin at the Railway about 9am, move to the South Taranaki Club when it opened at 11am, go home for lunch and a snooze and head back to the club at 3pm.

When I asked him how long he'd been living like this, he replied: "Not bloody long enough."

He later shocked Hawera by giving up alcohol. This was when people began telling him he'd go the same way as Morrieson.

On the subject of Morrieson, McCormick said: "Actually I'm a bit sick of talking to journalists about Ron. A lot of rubbish has beenwritten and a lot of people are suddenly discovering that they knew him.

"He's getting to be larger than life. He wanted success but not fame. He never told anyone outside of his mother and aunt he was writing books until after the first one was published."

Don McCormick was a lifemember and former Rangatiraof the Hawera Savage Club and very proud of what he helped the club achieve.

By RICHARD WOODD - Taranaki Daily News
Last updated 05:00 02/05/2009