Farewell To A Truly Great Man

Farewell to a truly great man - The Dominion Post Friday, 15 June 2007

"I think continually of those who were truly great", wrote Stephen Spender, "near the snow, near the sun, in the highest fields, see how these names are feted."
They are words to lift the spirit on this dreary winter's afternoon in Auckland, as I make my way to the little chapel where the body of Phil Amos, teacher, politician, visionary, lies waiting for family and friends to say goodbye.
He was frail toward the end: silver hair thinning, flesh sagging, hands intertwined like the knotted roots of an old puriri tree. Eighty years will do that to any man. But the wry grin remained, and the bright blue eyes glittering with mischief.
And, oh, the man in his prime. That visionary gaze, that determined jaw eased and softened by that sensual mouth. The sixties photographer, still in love with the chiaroscuro effects that only black- and-white film can bestow upon a portrait, did his work well. Because here he is: Phillip Albert Amos, the 37-year-old Member of Parliament for Manuwera, just elected and impatient to change the world.
It's the face looking up at me from the cover of the funeral programme lying in my lap.
Mike Lee, chairman of the Auckland Regional Council, who delivers the first eulogy, recalls Phil's description of that first, nervous call to his new boss, the leader of the Opposition, Arnold Nordmeyer.
"What happens now?"
"Well," said Nordy, "the Tories don't like to do too much before the lambs go off to the works. So, I doubt if Parliament will be called together much before May. We'll probably have our first caucus meeting sometime in February. So, my advice to you is relax, read, and get to know your electorate."
In 1963 it was a different world.
Mike goes on to paint a wonderful word portrait of Phil in 1973, by which time he was minister of education and minister of island affairs in Norman Kirk's third Labour government.
The minister was speaking from the veranda of the only hotel in Avarua, to a gathering of Cook Island teachers. It was evening, that brief moment of green and gold as the sun descends into the dark waters of the Pacific. Mike recalled his stance: easy, assured full of confidence and hope.
That was the mood of both the Government and the people of New Zealand in the early months of 1973, and Mike, a young ship's officer, felt his heart swell with pride at the thought that after 12 long years of Tory rule, the true progressive country of Seddon and Savage was at last reasserting itself.
And no one in Kirk's Cabinet summed up the idealism and courage of that government more vividly than Phil Amos. The debates that still rage from sex education to internal assessment all date from his period as minister.
Of course, they fought him every inch of the way: the timid education bureaucrats and the deeply reactionary men and women who ran our primary and secondary schools in the 1970s. His magnificent education development conference was pilloried in the press who cast him as a dangerous manipulator of young minds.
And they were right. Phil Amos was dangerous. But not because he was a manipulator – he was never that. He was dangerous because he was the most radical member of that generation of New Zealand politicians who came back from World War II determined to make the bloodshed and the suffering mean something. He was dangerous because he wanted to liberate minds: moving beyond the material triumphs of Savage and Fraser to set free the spirit of the nation's youth.
Looking around the chapel, I am struck by the mystery of posterity. There sits his Tanzanian family. (Tanzanian president Julius Nyerere offered him refuge after the Muldoon landslide of 1975.) His wife Odilia, and daughters Fransiska (Kibe) and Marama. There, too, are Tony and Brett, his sons by first wife Jill.
I hear the dignified tributes of the Pacific Island Advisory Council which he established: "We trusted him to open the door for us and he delivered." Luamanuvao Winnie Laban brings condolences from the prime minister. Labour president Mike Williams, his voice raw with emotion, declares: "If we see further, it is only because we are standing on the shoulders of giants like Phil Amos."
And I, paraphrasing Stephen Spender, think of a man who was truly great. A man born of the sun, who travelled for a short while toward the sun, and left the vivid air singed with his honour.