National Portrait: Lance Girling-Butcher - from newspapers to advocacy

Thursday, 12 September 2019

At home with Lance Girling-Butcher, his wife Ali and guide dog Yogi.

Lance Girling-Butcher went blind 13 years ago but that doesn't stop his wife expecting him to light the fire.

He's proud of it too. He'll even guide you to his beloved kindling cracker where he cuts the kindling.

In an isolated region, famous for oil and gas and dairy farming, Girling-Butcher is one of Taranaki's most well-known liberals with a legacy that continues to grow.

He was the editor of the Taranaki Herald and Taranaki Daily News who controversially (though quietly) dropped Mt Egmont in favour of Mt Taranaki, the district councillor who unfailingly championed the building of the Len Lye Centre, and the advocate for the blind and elderly who received a Queen's Service Medal for his work in 2016.

But the 76-year-old isn't really into awards, accolades or titles, he says.

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In fact he's more worried about making you feel at ease. He tries his hardest not look to blind. It makes people uncomfortable, he says.

'Some people are terrified of disabled people and worried they'll offend them,' he explains.

But Girling-Butcher isn't easily offended.

'I'm blind, and I'm deaf, and I'm f….d,' he says, clearly enjoying his frank description.

As a newspaper editor Girling-Butcher was an advocate for the weak, a watchdog on his region's institutions. As a district councillor he was well known as a champion of the arts. His loss of sight has made him an advocate for the rights of Taranaki's disabled and elderly citizens.

He chairs the New Plymouth Positive Ageing Trust and is the first Pākehā member of the Board of Kapo Māori Aotearoa New Zealand, the national advocacy group for blind Māori.

Girling-Butcher, who grew up in Northland and was head boy of Rangitahi District High School, says going blind was the worst thing ever to happen to him. But he tries not to dwell on it.

'It starts me off on a self-destructive path and self-pity if I think about it.' So instead, he keeps busy.

He can often be seen walking around New Plymouth with guide dog Yogi leading the way. The dog, a labrador of famously relaxed attitude, is a celebrity around the city, almost as much as the man he guides.

Despite his being retired for more than a decade, his phone rings nearly as often as when he was a newspaper editor. Whether it be a return call from a tree specialist, dealing with a matter for one of the many boards he sits on, or one of his three children checking in, he spends hours a day talking to people who aren't in the same room.

Wife Ali, who didn't learn to drive until her husband went blind in 2006, says she'd rather he kept busy than sit and wallow. 'He's been so positive, I never even think he's blind.'

Married for 53 years, the couple now have six grandchildren to add to their busy schedule. It is heart breaking to realise Girling-Butcher has never seen any of them.

But he has felt them and knows each of them distinctly through their sounds. He keeps a 'database of voices', he says, while acknowledging it's not quite the same.

In 2006 his loss of sight forced Girling-Butcher to resign from his job as editor of the Taranaki Daily News and leave journalism for good. It wasn't easy. It was a career that defined him and arguably still does.

The couple have been together 53 years and have three children and six grandchildren.

He looks back fondly. But really, he says, he should never have been a journalist. He's severely dyslexic.

'When I finished school I went to a careers guy who told me I should be a social worker or a journalist.

'I decided to ignore the fact I couldn't spell and become a journalist.'

So at 22 he became a junior reporter.

In his first two years in the news game two major events helped draw him into the industry and keep him there. First the head teacher of Inglewood High School was shot by a student and then, on the same day, the Wahine sank.

They were tragic events and as a reporter Girling-Butcher was at the centre of how the community and the country responded to them. It was hard, emotionally-draining work. But he loved it.

Girling-Butcher can often be spotted out and about with Yogi who would always be in attendance at council meetings too.

He worked his way up to editor of The Taranaki Herald, which closed in 1989, and then moved over to the Taranaki Daily News.

The closure of the Herald was traumatic for him, but he's proud that Taranaki was the last province in New Zealand to lose its second paper.

He's also proud of his stand on Mt Taranaki to help right a 230-year-old problem.

In 1770, even though it already had a name, Captain James Cook renamed the region's dominating volcano Mt Egmont, after John Perceval, 2nd Earl of Egmont, a former First Lord of the Admiralty.

And that's what it was widely known as for more than 200 years. This changed in 1986 when the Minister of Lands ruled that 'Mt Taranaki' would be an alternative and equal official name.

The 'new' name didn't catch on in Taranaki. Mt Egmont was still widely used with Mt Taranaki often only uttered with a heavy smear of sarcasm. Using Taranaki in the region's newspapers wasn't a straight-forward decision. It came with a serious commercial risk.

'We were constantly being asked by Māori, in the most polite way, if we could change the name but we were also aggressively attacked by redneck Pākehā who said if we changed the mountain's name, they were going to cancel the paper and do all sorts of diabolical things,' Girling-Butcher says.

'But I was quite inspired by the politeness with which some of these older Māori rang up and explained how important it was to them that the name became Taranaki.'

It was not until 2004, when a small aircraft crashed into the crater of Mt Taranaki, killing both men on board, that Girling-Butcher felt he was in a position to make the change.

In 2016 Girling-Butcher was awarded the Queen's Service Medal for his advocating for the rights of Taranaki's disabled and elderly citizens. He says it is one of his proudest achievements.

The unfortunate story went all over the world and as he followed its progress he noticed overseas media were calling the mountain Taranaki, not Egmont.

So he decided, without telling readers, that in the paper it was always to be referred to as Mt Taranaki. The change has stuck. Referring to the mountain as Mt Egmont is now largely unheard of.

Girling-Butcher took his role as editor seriously and was involved in all aspects of the paper, says Chris Lonsdale, who worked alongside him as a senior feature writer at the Taranaki Daily News.

'He was a good listener, always tried to be fair, and defended his staff, he loved his staff.'

And his staff loved him, Lonsdale says. 'Even when he did arrive with his breakfast egg down his tie or dog s..t on his shoes and a couple of Band-aids wrapped around his spectacles to keep them upon his nose.'

The Girling-Butcher house was the hub of staff activities and if the walls could talk they would speak of the legendary parties often hosted there, Lonsdale confesses.

And new staff who had moved to Taranaki from around the country would often be brought home for Ali to mother.

Lonsdale says Girling-Butcher would sometimes be in the middle of a crisis at work and get a phone call from Ali presenting him with another crisis from home.

'He'd be trying to deal with the two things at the same time but very rarely lost his cool.'

When Girling-Butcher left the industry he focused his efforts elsewhere within the community – the New Plymouth District Council.

He was elected in September 2007 and says he was a constant reminder to his fellow councillors about how the city needed to be more aware of its citizens with disabilities.

Probably because it wasn't just Girling-Butcher who became part of the furniture at the council building, it was Yogi too.

Yogi was always in attendance at council meetings and became much-loved, says former mayor Peter Tennent.

'It's not unusual for a mayor to talk too long in those meetings and Yogi would always give a yawn or a bark to remind us to keep on track.'

Girling-Butcher as a councillor was hardworking, Tennent says.

'Fabulous, positive, incredibly hardworking, one of the hardest-working councillors.

'I'm proud to call him a friend and to have had the privilege of working with him.'