Gordon Coates: 'Let the Deeds Speak'

Abstract

For nearly all of the 51 years since he died suddenly at his desk, someone, somewhere, has been researching Coates's life, writing about him, or exhorting others to do so. Within days ofCoates's death on 27 May 1943, 0.5. (Budge) Hintz, a New Zealand Herald reporter, began work on a biography. Hintz had known Coates well, and had been directed by his employers to prepare favourable local reports for the Herald to publish during Coates's difficult re-election campaign in 1935. By 1944 Hintz was overseas with the Navy, his rising seniority leading ultimately to the Herald's editorship, caused him to abandon the biography. Coates's secretary retrieved boxes of material from Hintz's home in the mid forties and went on sorting them herself.' The torch passed to Coates's first Kaipara electorate chairman, Carey Carrington, who began addressing Rotary and Optimist Club meetings about what he saw as Coates's legacy'