Sorry sight for members

MIKE SCOTT/Taranaki Daily News

LEST WE FORGET: A sad Robbie Galvin examines the cross taken down at the club.

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It was a sad and sorry sight that greeted New Plymouth RSA members at their clubrooms yesterday morning.

Outside the doors, a handwritten chalk sign announced the club's hasty closure, while inside the veterans' prized marble cross lay on the ground, carefully removed from its perch high above the restaurant.

Even as staff pulled more memorabilia from the walls and counted the last of the coins from the till, members continued to arrive at the old building in a slow trickle, obviously unaware of the news.

"Today is usually senior members' day, they come in for lunch and a hand of cards," executive member Robbie Galvin said.

"We put it [the news the club had shut] over the radio this morning, but obviously they couldn't reach everyone in time."

One of those members, 82-year-old Derek Coppin, had been part of the RSA for 60 years and was visibly disappointed when told of the news.

"This is a shock," he said, looking around at the dark, empty room.

"Usually on club day you get as many as 100 people here, especially if some of the other clubs turn up."

Mr Coppin said for him and many of his friends, their trips to the RSA were their only social outings. "That's the problem. What are we all going to do? It's going to be very sad. It would be good if we could find somewhere else to go," he said.

Other members expressed anger. A group of ladies who turned up with plates of cream-topped scones and corn fritters had come from Stratford that morning for club day.

"They could have at least advised the members what had happened. We're fully paid-up after all," they said.

"I guess we'll have to go to the New Plymouth Club instead."

Member Laurie Mackie said they thought many of the club's members were fed up with the executive committee.

"When we first read about what the Crows were doing we thought it looked good," Mr Mackie said.

"And then when it all hit the fan we thought it was the returned servicemen trying to do the best they could, but there's a generation gap. They're too old to understand the other members' wishes."

They agreed that what had started the friction was Steve Crow's role as a pornographer and his intentions to advertise erotica on a billboard at the RSA site.

However, a female friend of Mr Mackie's, who did not want to be named, pointed out that many servicemen would have visited a brothel while on duty.

"And then they come back here and put on their holier-than-thou attitude like they've never been to a massage parlour," she said.

"They would have. I should know, I was married to a returned serviceman."

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