YEARBURY, BETTY DOROTHY (SISTER)

 

Betty Yearbury was born in Hawera on 26 January 1919, the daughter of Edward Joseph and Elizabeth Malloch Yearbury nee Lamb.

 

After leaving school, Betty began working for Mrs Gray at the Carlton Tea Rooms and stayed there until she left to become a Methodist Deaconess.� Betty�s commitment to work in the Methodist Church and the Maori Mission began when aged 17, she used to cycle out to Taiporohenui Marae to take Sunday School and Bible Class.� Sister Anne Wilson encouraged her in this work and later challenged Betty to work at Kurahuna Hostel where they needed an assistant matron.� She had been working for twelve years altogether when she entered Deaconess House at the age of 27, and settling down to study was not easy.� Voice production classes, with preliminary gargle and breathing exercises, she found entertaining and moderately useful, and she regretted that introductory lesson in Maori only lasted one term.� She did not master the Maori language, working on the understanding at the time that it was more important to know the heart of the people.

 

Her first appointment was to Rangiatea Maori Girls College, and then in 1951, to the district work she loved, based at Opunake.� Learning to drive a car (on the beach at New Plymouth and in an evacuated cow paddock) was essential, as her district encircled Mt Egmont.� Here, and in her later appointments in the King Country and back on home ground, at Hawera, her work with the young was helped by the influence of strong Maori women.

 

Betty�s ministry was deeply pastoral, she knew each family in her care well, visiting them in their homes and spending many occasions at the local marae, particularly when there was a tangi.

 

Betty Yearbury died on the 3 September 1991 at Rotorua.� Warm tributes were paid by Maori, Pakeha and Tongan friends.

 

Betty had a sister, Peggy Tregonning Yearbury, who was born at Hawera on the 5^th June 1916.� She became secretary at the Hawera Dairy Company office in Scott Street, Hawera for 10 or 12 years.� In the 1950s she worked as a secretary for the Methodist Youth Office in Wellington, and as part of her work did a great deal of background preparation for annual Methodist youth conferences.� She was also secretary for the National Council of Churches in Christchurch, and worked for UNICEF in Wellington.� Peggy married Rev George Goodman late in life and died in Rotorua in 1979.

 

SOURCES

Wanganui Conference 1991 Methodist Church

Out of the Silence — Methodist Women of Aotearoa 1822-1985 by Ruth Fry

Ed Yearbury, Auckland (Brother)