Colleen Yorwarth 1935-2025

Mrs Colleen Yorwarth is remembered as ' staunch and loyal lady' and  with a 'wonderful smile and such a welcoming woman' as a long time member for BPW in the Franklin and Huntly areas. She often accompanied her daughter Andrea Kimber to Franklin meetings and our thoughts are with her family.

Colleen was a descendant of the Barnaby family who have a rich history in the Franklin area including two predecessors who voted in the first election after the Suffragettes won the right for women to vote. 

Colleen was partly responsible for recording the Barnaby history. The new subdivision Belmont was named after the Barnaby homestead on that property. Another arm of the family, two sisters were married to the two men who developed the Pukekohe longkeeper onion….the brown skinned one we all use.

Colleen began her nursing training at Waikato Hospital in March 1953, working in Ward 17, a 46-bed medical unit in what is now the Hockin Building. Highlights of the early years included lining Pembroke St for a drive-by from the newly crowned Queen Elizabeth II, helping to change the nursing curriculum to include maternity training when she was a tutor, and being one of eight to form a guard of honour at the state funeral of Cabinet minister Dame Hilda Ross in 1959.

Mrs Yorwarth remembered the Tangiwai disaster when she was working the night shift on Christmas Day and many of her colleagues went to the scene of the disaster, west of Waiouru, to help with the clean up. She left nursing in 1961 to raise five children, but returned in 1973, working as a midwife at Huntly Hospital until maternity services were terminated there in 1995 and she retired.

Colleen passed in July after a period of illness at the Kimihia Home for Palliative Care and the service celebrating her life was rich with reference to her BPW work and commitment to women.