Celebrating the art of achieving his century

• Author: Laurilee McMichael
• Published date: 04 March 2021
• Publication title: Taupo Weekender

The former art teacher will spend the day celebrating his century with family and friends, and while he may be confined to a wheelchair after breaking his leg in a fall two years ago, Norm is alert and happy to retell stories from his life.

Born March 4, 1921 at 57 Greenlane Rd, Auckland — which is now part of the Dilworth School grounds — Norm was brought up in St Heliers, which back then was semi-rural Auckland. His father was a Gallipoli veteran, who met and married his mother in England during World War I.

“My mother was a housewife and Dad was driving for LJ Keys, who were the first bus service from St Heliers,” Norm says.

“I wasn’t the first child but I was the eldest. I had an older brother, Teddy, who died when he was 4.”

Norm’s daughter Pauline Chester thinks Teddy’s death was possibly from meningitis but Norm has a different theory, one that came about when his mother used to find him and his two younger brothers Mac (short for Malcolm) and Bill eating unripe fruit.

“Our mother used to tell us when we were raiding the orchard and eating the apples, that he died from eating green apples.”

When Norm was 2 his family shifted into a brand new two-bedroom house. There was no gas, no electricity and it had an outside toilet.

“St Heliers was quite different then. There were five houses from St Heliers Bay Rd up to St Thomas’ ruin. Now, it’s absolutely chockablock with houses all up there.

“We almost lived on the beach, we used to go there a lot. We used to go to the rock pools. We used to go fishing and we borrowed a boat from the man across the road, it was a 14-foot clinker and we would row it, one oar each, and go fishing, we’d catch snapper mostly in those days.”

Norm taught himself to swim and became a very strong swimmer, regularly swimming over to Browns Island (2km in a straight line). Three times he and a friend swam to Rangitoto Island from St Heliers (4.5km), and back. What’s more, he didn’t even tell his mother first.

The family home was on a three-quarter acre section and the Frasers grew all their own vegetables, with the boys looking after the lawns and gardens. As an adult, Norm always had his own garden and Mac went on to work at the Parnell Rose Gardens.

Norm attended St Heliers Bay Primary School where the largest class had 106 students.

“I never got the strap [at primary school] but Bill did. He would go out and play in the rain when they weren’t supposed to.”

On Norm’s wall is a painting of parrots. He says it was the first...