BLAKE, ETHEL AMELIA DAISY nee ALLAN

Ethel Allan was born on the 5 June 1904 at Okaiawa, the daughter of Thomas John and Mary Amelia Allan nee Wood.

Ethel trained as a nurse at the original Hawera Hospital (now Ngahuru) and this is where she met her future husband John (Jack) Robert Blake.  Jack spent nine years driving ambulances and said “the roads were pretty bad then and the nurses used to go out with us for rides and to help us out.  A lot of times we couldn’t have done without them.” They married on the 1 December 1926 at St John’s Presbyterian Church, Hawera.

Soon after the couple went to live in Patea, where Jack drove for a Wanganui firm and in 1932 the couple moved to Kaponga where they took over the garage.  Jack joined the army in 1942, and while the war progressed Ethel managed the City Private Hotel in Blenheim.  At the war’s end she rejoined her husband in Palmerston North where she ran the Willard Orphanage as matron for nine years.  In the late 1950s they returned to Stratford where they ran the Carlton Boarding House for nine years before retiring to Hawera.

In 1986 the couple celebrated their diamond wedding anniversary and Ethel died on the 16 December 1992 at Hawera in her 88^th year.

SOURCE

“Daily News” 2 Dec 1986