Local veteran features on stamp

• Published date: 10 April 2024
• Author: Michaela Gower
• Publication title: Hastings Leader, The

Each of the six veterans chosen for the special-edition stamps was awarded the Operational Service Medal for service that exceeded the normal requirements of peacetime service

Hawke’s Bay Today spoke to a modest Waite who appears on the $3.30 stamp.

She described the experience as a “harmless little thing” that she was expecting a lot of “stick” for at work.

“I don’t like my photo being taken, but it felt like a good thing to do.”

Waite, who grew up in Wairoa and boarded at Napier Girls’ High School, felt inspired to join the Royal New Zealand Air Force in 2000 by her grandparents who were World War II veterans.

She joined as a telecommunications operator and technician and became a helicopter crewman in 2010.

“I’d always seen pictures of Grandad up on the wall and his medals and, to be honest, I didn’t see myself as someone who would go to university, I wanted to do something practical.”

The 44-year-old, who lives in Maraekākaho, was first deployed to the Solomon Islands, where she worked as a communications information technician.

She spent her time doing “flight-following radios and helping out with communications back to New Zealand”.

Waite is pictured on the stamp with medals, each signifying a deployment, or time frame in the Air Force.

Waite now works for the Hawke’s Bay Rescue Helicopter Trust as a crewman and emergency medical technician.

Waite said she wasn’t in the Air Force for the medals, but to help people and be there for families regardless of the outcome.

“Everyone has a...