My first memory of “Jop” is seeing him - bespectacled - in the front row at Medical School lectures. The story he gave was that, as a scholar, his GP blamed his impaired vision on too much book work, and he was advised to spend a year away on a southern Hawke's Bay farm! When young he was smitten with polio which affected a leg; thus he was not too involved in competitive sport, but loved the outdoors. We shared a great tramping trip on the Greenstone and Routeburn tracks.
After graduation we were Registrars at Palmerston North. Jop obtained a good apprenticeship in Pathology there under the late Thos. Pullar. I recall a memorable trip to Cape Kidnappers to view the gannets, on Labour Weekend 1954. The following year he took off to the UK and enrolled for the Hammersmith postgraduate course. He advised me to learn to type, so I bought a typewriter on my arrival, raw, at London House. This enabled classier job applications, and typed case notes were to impress Avery Jones no end. At Central Middlesex Hospital, Jop worked as Avery Jones' houseman. His contact facilitated my appointment to Avery Jones' job when Jop left. Avery was the UK doyen of gastroenterology, and this stimulated me to carry on in this field. He had a great affection for graduates from New Zealand and Australia. Jop's impish sense of humour can be illustrated by his taking off of Avery's English accent, punctuated by Avery's characteristic tic of the right eyelid!
Jop and I shared a superb skiing trip to East Tyrol, and later with our respective wives we motored and camped through Austria, Switzerland, and northern Italy. Highlights were Venice with our gondolier Antonio (who Jop claimed to recognise from an earlier trip!) and dressing up from our pup tents to visit the Monte Carlo casino. On the Continent our strategies to negotiate narrow roads were, if in doubt, to drive straight ahead; secondly, when behind a slow driver, we would concentrate our minds to psyche the driver to take a turn to the right or left! To decide the best angles for his photographs, Jop would study the postcards displayed in the street: at school, he used to process his own films.
On return to New Zealand in 1960 we immediately met up with Jop's parents and Pat, who became great friends and surrogate grandparents to our children. Helen, Jop's Scottish wife, is a marvellous friend, nurse and companion. They have two lovely daughters and now grandchildren. We have kept in touch over the years, and called on them during visits to the UK. Even three years ago Jop seemed reasonably OK; but now, in the later stages of Parkinson's disease, even the Queen's Square pundits are perplexed in maintaining pharmacological control.
We will treasure our wonderful friendship with Helen and Jop.
(These memories were among those compiled in 1998 for a book of “Memories of Form 4A 1941, Wellington College)