Ann Corcoran
Ann Corcoran died aged 88 on 4 February 2020. I met Ann and her colleague Mary Clark in 1984. I was a legal adviser in the Department of Justice (DoJ) and Ann and Mary were social workers with the Department of Social Welfare (DSW). They had been seconded to head office to work on the Adult Adoption Information Bill. Because the bill, if it passed, would be administered in the DoJ, I worked on it with them.
Jonathan Hunt MP tried several times between 1977 and 1980 to introduce a private member’s bill on adult adoption information. He could make no headway while the National Party was in government. When the Labour Party was elected in 1984, he became a Cabinet Minister and could not introduce a private member’s bill. Fran Wilde MP took on the job and her private member’s bill passed in 1985.
I found Ann and Mary a joy to work with. We did together all the things that officials needed to do to get a bill through the parliamentary process and to make it operational. We brought different skills to the project and we respected one another’s contributions.
I admired Ann and Mary because they had no hesitation in saying that, as practising social workers, they had been wrong to enforce secrecy around adoption. They did not have a choice, of course, as section 23 of the Adoption Act 1955 had the effect of sealing birth records. However, what impressed me was their willingness to learn from their work experiences. In particular, Ann, even though a practising Catholic, could see how cruel the “clean break” principle was and was prepared to say so. Both Ann and Mary worked to convince others that compassion, not theory, should guide the decision on whether adoption records should be opened.
For completeness, I should mention Mary Iwanek here. Mary Iwanek was also a DSW social worker who was active in promoting openness around adoption. She was a wonderful person, who (as I recall) came on board later than Ann Corcoran and Mary Clark. Mary Iwanek died in 2019.
2020
Anne Fisher
Anne Fisher died on 6 May 2018. I heard about her when I started volunteering in the felines area at the SPCA in 2007. One morning when I came in for my shift, there was a box of straws on the kitchen window sill with a note saying “Straws for the kittens. Anne F”. I was very puzzled, as I did not know that cats could drink through straws. I eventually found out that they were for the kittens to play with.
That was such an Anne touch. She was passionate about the welfare of cats and, for cats in a shelter, that meant providing them with stimulation. She supplied little stools to go in the cages of the cats in Quarantine and Isolation, as she wanted them to have something to hide under or jump on top of. Stimulation had to be provided with a dose of caution – she was fierce about not having stringy toys tied to the top of cages, to avoid the kittens tangling themselves in the string.
Anne’s passion was also seen in her zeal for setting traps in areas where unowned mother cats were likely to have their kittens. This frequently meant going out in the dark into lonely and isolated spots. I remember one night after an adoption event at Northland School when Anne said she was off to set a trap in a forested area in Upper Hutt. She said she had forgotten to bring her torch so she would just have to manage (this was before everyone had a cellphone with a torch on it). I obliged her to take my key-ring torch which gave a feeble beam if the button was kept down. Anne clearly thought she would be fine without a torch and took it solely to keep me happy. When she later returned the torch to me, it was obvious she was right – she was fine, she had set the trap, and had got the mum and kittens.
Anne volunteered weekly in the hospital area at the SPCA and was a feline foster mother. In her fostering, her specialty was feral mother cats with kittens. Anne devised ways to keep the mother cat for the kittens to feed from while also allowing Anne to get hold of the kittens to check their health and socialise them. One clever method was to wrap barbecue tongs in foam rubber so she could use the tongs to lift the kittens out from their run.
Anne was tiny – about 5 feet tall and carrying no weight. Yet she carted traps out into the bush and crates into adoption events with no apparent effort. I don’t know how old she was in the 11 years I knew her, but I got the impression she was well into her 70s. Her life was an example of putting compassion into practice.
2018
Believe the good stuff
One day recently I sent 2 emails.
The first was to a former colleague. I had heard on the grapevine that she had a new boss whom she was not happy about. However, I could see advantages for the office where she worked in having a boss with the qualification that the new person had. Until this time, the office had been operating in an unsatisfactory way from a constitutional point of view and the appointee would at least deal with this issue. I sent an email saying that I knew about the new boss and wondered if my former colleague would be interested in meeting me for coffee to talk about the matter.
Within a short time, I received an icy formal note saying that discussing the internal processes at the office was not something she wanted to do.
The second email I sent was this-
“Subject: Well done on the “Sunday” programme
Hi, ….. I saw you on the “Sunday” programme last evening and I’m getting in touch to say that I think you are wonderful. It was heart-breaking to hear that people have the time and motivation to be so hurtful about the special contribution that you and all SPCA staff make. If the effort that people put into being mean could be put into something worthwhile, how much better the world would be for animals and humans.
Social media has revealed the true, hateful, nature of a lot of human beings – in one way, that is good because it shows the size and shape of the problem, but in another it is dreadful because loving and generous people, such as yourself, take the meanness to heart. I want you to know that there are people out here, such as myself, who admire what you do.
I should mention that I know what I am talking about when I speak of SPCA staff, as I have have been a volunteer at the centre in Wellington for 13 years.”
At the end of the day, I got this reply-
Thank you so much! It really helps get you through the tough times when you know that there are people, like yourself, who believe in you and know that we are doing the best we can for all the animals.
Wow 13 years volunteering that is awesome, the Wellington Team are lucky to have you!
Again thank you so much for your kind words, It really means a lot, and its support like this that really helps when things get tough.
Thank you
Area Manager … | … Centre SPCA”
The reply to my first email was such a slap in the face that I instantly deleted the correspondence. Getting a reply to my second email was such a surprise that I kept the correspondence to think about later. Not unexpectedly, it was the reply to my first email that stuck in my mind and made me feel small. It took a while for the warmth of the second reply to get through to me. When it did, I realised how lucky I was – on the same day, I reached out in friendship to 2 people and was met with disdain on the one hand and appreciation on the other. It is the appreciation that matters.
2020
Margaret's musings 