Byron RICHARDS Obituary

Byron was one of my best friends. We met in about 1991 at an Otaki main street fair where he was at a stall for the New Zealand Peace Council. I enlisted his enthusiasm for my campaign to cancel the sale of Kohitere Forest by the Government, for an alternative "Kohitere Peace Forest Reserve"
I was, in 2007, greatly admiring of his single handed effort to organize an annual Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombing commemoration, at the Wellington Botanic Garden Peace flame. His passion for a nuclear weapons free world was legionary. He was a wonderful inspiration to many folk who became champions of the cause in their own right. Alyne Ware and Helen Ritchie for instance.
In 2011, the late Maria Van der Meel enthusuastically took over those events with my assistance. Byron attended for some years until failing health over-took him. I visited him in the "Levin Home" towards his final days. He would still have a knowing look as I repeated his favourite "Kia Kaha", "Be Strong!" appeal. I miss Byron greatly, as will his many friends in the Peace Movement, here, in Japan and worldwide. I remember well his receiving 48 thousand folded small paper Peace cranes in many cartons from Japan. They were given out in Wellington and elsewhere.