Cyril Bradwell

Lives Lived | Harold Hill on a rugby-playing Order of the Founder member

Cyril R. Bradwell OF, QSO, JP, BCom, ACA, MA, was Promoted to Glory from Wellington Hospital, New Zealand, on Thursday 27 November, aged 92. A man who has been part of our landscape for as long as we can remember has gone from us. And what a man of many parts he was: sportsman and athlete, soldier, teacher, missionary, scholar, archivist and historian, friend, husband and family man, Rotarian and Justice of the Peace, Salvationist and local officer. Shakespeare might well have written of him, as he did of Brutus, “His life was gentle, and the elements so mixed in him that Nature might stand up, and say to all the world, “This was a man!”

Born in Christchurch, Cyril was adopted by a Salvationist couple. His father went off in search of work in the Great Depression and never returned but his mother made great sacrifices to ensure he had an education. After Christchurch Technical College (they could not afford for him to take up a scholarship he won to Christ’s College), Cyril began working as a cadet in the Justice Department. He went on to Canterbury University and completed accountancy studies before World War II.

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Tags: Order of the Founder