Local Burial for Exceptional New Plymouth Woman

The ashes of an exceptional New Plymouth woman who improved the lives of uncounted people around the world will be interred at Te Henui Cemetery tomorrow (Friday).

Zena Daysh, a Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to human ecology and a recipient of the UN Habitat Award, died on 23 March this year.

Mayor Harry Duynhoven says Mrs Daysh was a remarkable woman whose long list of achievements have been recognised nationally and internationally.

“She based herself overseas but always thought of New Plymouth as her home, and it is our honour to mark her return,” he says.

Former Mayor of Hamilton Margaret Evans says her good friend Mrs Daysh was New Zealand’s most inspirational 20th century woman.

“She founded a London-based Commonwealth agency which has projects worldwide. She attended every one of the last 17 Commonwealth Heads of Government meetings and had planned to attend the CHOGM in Perth this year, even though she was 96,” she says.

“She made a point of knowing every president, Prime Minister and important person necessary to further her cause – and with great success over more than half a century.”

Mrs Daysh was born on 30April 1914 in New Plymouth and came from a political family: Her grandfather was Mayor of Blenheim and her father James Clarke was Mayor of New Plymouth. She lost her father in an air crash at New Plymouth in 1920, which served as a milestone in her young life and gave her the drive to push for later achievements.

She developed a philosophy of human ecology during the war years, which found fruition in the 1950s as convenor of the Commonwealth Committee on Preventative Medicine, and culminated in founding the Commonwealth Human Ecology Council in 1969.

Her ashes are being brought from London to New Plymouth by John Bonham, her trustee and executor of her will. While in New Plymouth, Mr Bonham will present to the city two artworks from New Zealand artist Sydney Thompson from Mrs Daysh’s collection.

Mr Bonham has also presented $500,000 to Waikato University in Mrs Daysh’s name.