Life's dream fulfilled

BY LES WATKINS

No one worked more tirelessly for those needing help than Bob Urban of Orewa, a cofounder of the local hospice, who has died aged 91.

He was inspired by the enthusiasm of wife Carmen, also 91, who considered a hospice was urgently needed on the Hibiscus Coast.

"And I was so pleased that Bob could be at the September opening of the wonderful $7 million in-patient facility at Red Beach," she says. "For both of us that was the fulfilment of a dream."

That dream began after they visited friends in the United States.

"The woman told me she was working with something called a hospice and I said: 'Gosh, what's a hospice?'," says Carmen.

"It struck me as something we needed here."

On their return she discovered there was a hospice in south Auckland and that one was planned for the North Shore.

She volunteered to help when the North Shore Hospice opened in 1983. Bob - who became chairman of patient services there in 1986 - helped her establish a branch on the Hibiscus Coast.

In July 1986 the branch started with 28 volunteers, recruited and trained by Bob and Carmen, and six patients. Patient numbers now average nearly 100.

They initiated fundraising projects, including the placing of Christmas remembrance trees at shopping centres.

Bob chaired the inaugural Hibiscus Hospice board of trustees in 1992-93 and they were both involved in buying its first headquarters in Orewa's Pohutukawa Ave.

During Bob's 20-year membership of Orewa Rotary Club, of which he was president in 1981-82, he and Carmen were particularly active in the youth exchange programme.

"We sometimes had as many as 10 students from overseas staying with us," says Carmen.

"Bob was great with young people."

He was also concerned about the health of older people and in his 80s he mastered a method devised in Israel by Moshe Feldenkrais for making efficient use of ageing muscles.

Then he organised training sessions for other seniors to reap the benefits.

After he and Carmen emigrated to this country from Germany in 1963, he worked as an executive with a firm of importers.

During World War Two he was a commissioned officer in the German army and was wounded while serving on the dreaded Russian front.

In addition to Carmen, he is survived by four children, nine grandchildren and five great-grandchildren.

- © Fairfax NZ News