Jim Goddin, Jon Broadley, Tony Hill, Mike Madden, Lionel Orr, Rob Good, Sharon Smith, Janine and Darren Sutton (Te Awamutu), Julie Strawbridge, Dawn Babbington, Andrew and Cathy Cuming, John Taylor, Ants Hawkes. Photo: Mary Anne Gill
The only known recent photo of Aussie O’Brien.
More details have emerged about John Patrick O’Brien, the former New Zealand soldier buried at Hautapu Cemetry in May after his body went unclaimed in Waikato Hospital’s morgue.
Tauranga reader Wendy Napier-Walker is an amateur family historian and her interest was piqued by our May 25 story.
Through family history forum Rootschat.com she found out the man his friends knew as “Aussie”, because he told them he was born in Australia, was in fact born on March 14, 1943 in Paddington, England.
His parents were Patrick Gerald O’Brien and Rose Elizabeth Cochrane who married in England in 1935, both died in Australia – in 1973 and 2008.
They had two children – Margaret Rose O’Brien, born 1942 in Dublin and John Patrick O’Brien, a year later in England.
The four of them emigrated to Australia from London on the P & O ocean liner Strathnaver and arrived in Freemantle in July 1957. What is unknown is why the family subsequently moved to New Zealand and returned to Australia, without John, in 1963.
John went on to join the New Zealand Army, serving in the Service Corps in Vietnam. All told he had a 20-year army service.
Research by other distant family members show that Patrick O’Brien had two other children, Theresa born in 1936 and Anthony born in 1938. They too moved to Australia.
The News has contacted family members in Australia for further information.
John O’Brien died in Hamilton on March 2 this year and his body went unclaimed in the hospital morgue until Cambridge funeral director Jim Goddin made a formal declaration so he could be interned at the Hautapu RSA cemetery on May 18. His service medals remain unclaimed in Defence Headquarters in Wellington.
Read: Loner’s Last Post
Mourning a soldier: Chaplain Ants Hawkes, Jim Goddin, Jon Broadley, Tony Hill, Mike Madden, Lionel Orr, Rob Good, Sharon Smith, Janine and Darren Sutton, Julie Strawbridge, Dawn Babbington, Andrew and Cathy Cuming, John Taylor. Photo: Mary Anne Gill.
