Graham Cheater - Life Member
by Miriam Lewin
The walls of Graham’s hilltop home are adorned with artworks by his wife and daughters as well as travel photos he has taken of such wonders as the marine iguana. While a tui forages for nectar outside, the view from the window expands to encompass Kapiti Island, most of Waikanae and on a clear day, Mt Taranaki to the north. A bare precipitous paddock when they acquired it 20 years ago, it is now well planted, mostly with natives. His only regret regarding the property is that his mother never saw it when it had been developed; she visited when the house was just built and the grounds not much different from the sheep playground it was when Graham and wife Anne first discovered it.
Born in 1950 in Chelmsford, Essex to clerical worker parents, the young Graham played mostly board games at home with his family, occasionally dabbling in card games such as whist and euchre. He always did well at Maths and it was his secondary school Maths teacher who first taught him and a group of friends the rudiments of bridge. He took to it immediately and has always been interested in the statistical analysis of the game, which those of us who have been to his ‘Improver’s Lessons’ can attest to! Graham continued to play bridge extensively at Bradford Bridge Club, whilst studying at university; he won multiple awards in teams and pairs events, some of which still sit on an almost forgotten shelf upstairs in his home alongside a little plaque he won for being ‘Best Cyclist’ at his junior school. He also represented Yorkshire in county matches and played in the Gold Cup National teams event, making it to the quarter finals. Bradford Bridge Club was a large and serious club of 250-300 members, with a caterer and, naturally, a bar which was diligently attended throughout the playing sessions.
Perhaps Graham’s greatest love after family is travel. After completing his Pharmacy degree he embarked on the start of what would be a lifetime of travel which has seen him visit eighty countries, with more on his bucket list. His first major trip saw him travel overland from London to Sydney. This trip really opened up the world for Graham, and don’t worry, I know some consider him a (bridge) god, but he didn’t actually walk on water, he crossed the wet parts by boat. This epic journey was soon followed by his first experience of New Zealand. He travelled from the top of the North to the bottom of the South and was suitably impressed. Returning to England he soon itched for something different and took up a position with the International Red Cross in Thailand in 1980, where there was an unprecedented humanitarian crisis involving 600,000 Cambodian refugees.
In Thailand Graham oversaw pharmaceutical supplies and trained the locals to cope with typical scenarios using basic medications which they could realistically obtain. He had to find a way to deal with completely useless donations from America, describing his time with Red Cross as not dissimilar to the TV programme MASH. It was here that he met a Kiwi nurse named Anne. They returned together to England and married in Yorkshire in 1982.
Living later in Zambia, Graham again worked managing pharmaceutical supplies. He remembers a pretty lavish and social lifestyle in Zambia, with servants and no drink driving laws. Anne worked as a nurse and gave birth to their second daughter there. The bridge playing continued in Zambia and Graham also joined the Round Table service organisation, thus getting to know local professional Zambians. Taking advantage of the location the family took holidays to nearby South Africa, Mauritius and Zimbabwe.
Eventually a business opportunity brought the Cheaters to settle in Waikanae in 1985 with their three daughters. Here Graham was first a partner, then the sole owner of Waikanae pharmacy. At Waikanae Bridge Club Graham remembers playing with such greats as John Mautner, Celia Bowker and Wilf Buckley, and it was in the 1990’s that he heard mention that “a good player is coming down from Tauranga”. That player was Jeanne Wardill; they struck up not just a playing partnership but also a great friendship that endures to this day.
As their girls grew Anne and Graham continued to travel. Highlights include the Greek Islands, Macchu Picchu in Peru, a houseboat in Kashmir, sunrise over the Ganges river and the Moreno Glacier in Patagonia. By his own admission Graham is no adrenaline junkie, preferring a hot air balloon ride over the Serengeti to the bungy jumping favoured by his daughters. He and Anne continue to keep active, with albeit shorter tramps, and certainly no letup in their rigorous travel schedule. They have recently returned from the Galapagos Islands and are planning a walking tour in Scotland next year and visits to family and friends. As well, Graham has a couple of regular volunteering gigs, which keep him in touch with the local community where he was a well known figure for so many years.
Graham and Jeanne recently played in an inter provincial trial and won the Babich National pairs competition a few years ago. As a very capable President in 2015 -16, Graham instigated a robust process to maintain the integrity of our club at the highest level. He currently serves on the Wellington Regional Committee and is the regional Rubber Bridge co-ordinator.
Judith Jackson - Life Member
by Miriam Lewin
There is a cross stitched artwork hanging in Judith Jackson’s Waikanae beach kitchen: it is a backyard scene familiar to many: a garden, a childs tricycle and a row of colourful washing on a clothesline, each piece worked on a separate piece of fabric and ‘pegged’ so realistically it seems to flutter in the wind. This was a gift made by a dear friend of Judith’s whom she met when she first learnt to play bridge . This was the first of many introductions which started as bridge partnerships then developed into lifelong friendships, which add to the joy Judith has always found in the game. Daphne Johnson was that friend, and Judith caught from her that spark of enthusiasm for bridge that she has passed on to so many throughout her years of teaching.
Born in Shipley, Yorkshire, Judith and her brother had the quintessential English upbringing of the time, mostly in the care of nannies, and bridge was strictly an adult pursuit which her mother played keenly, along with golf in the summer. Judith married and emigrated, spending five weeks on a boat and living in various cities around New Zealand and became a busy mother of five children. Her brother joined her in New Zealand and her mother eventually retired and joined them when Judith was in her fourties.
It was then that her mother advised her that as she had a bit of free time with the children being older, she should learn to play bridge and golf. Being a mostly obedient child and feeling like an adult at last Judith did both! It was in Rotorua that Judith embarked on her bridge journey and at once she loved the logic of the game. The encouragement of more senior players like Daphne fed her growing enthusiasm and clearly Daphne recognised her obvious talent, as they had a successful partnership going there for a number of years. A very green Judith also played a tounament with her mother around this time and remembers being terrified about being asked for aces. Her mother wasn’t too stern however and they managed to win a bottle of wine!
At Victoria club, now living in Wellington, Judith met Ngaire Hesse (late of this club) and they formed a successful partnership and friendship also. It was with Ngaire in the nineteen eighties that Judith went to the National Congress in Rotorua. They spent the week together in a motel and after the end of the final day, Judith, aware of the demands of a busy family , asked if they could just get on the road home quickly, and not wait for the results which were scored manually at that time. Hence it wasn’t until a few days later that they found out they had actually won the Intermediate section.
Marjorie MacDonald has also become a longtime friend and bridge partner after Judith settled in Waikanae and a friendship with Joan McCarthy, Ann Tyrie, and the late Janet McMenamin has brought the four of them together for many years over the bridge table and elsewhere, further confirming Judith’s assertion that bridge creates enduring friendships.
In between bridge and a fair bit of golf in the warmer months, Judith travels regularly to visit her children and grandchildren overseas. Every year until Covid hit she takes a cottage in the Yorkshire Dales with her daughter. For the past 10 years or so, she has taken on the teaching role at Waikanae Bridge Club, where she does a sterling job of passing on her all-encompassing knowledge of the game, and where she gets a real thrill out of seeing people catch that spark of passion for bridge which has enhanced her life so brightly.