Queenstowners have been reeling this week over the sudden death of much-loved former school principal, councillor and active retiree
Mel Gazzard.

The 77-year-old died of a suspected heart attack while fitting a new mast to his yacht last Sunday.

When a friend found him, ‘‘he was just sitting against the cockpit’’, Sylvia, his wife of 55 years, says.

‘‘He must have felt a bit dizzy and gone to sleep, his glasses hadn’t even moved on his face.’’

Raised in Southland, Mel was a fourth-generation teacher.

‘‘He shifted me 19 times in 21 years as we moved around the countryside,’’ Sylvia says.

The then-Queenstown Primary School dental nurse was her best friend, so when the principal’s job came up in ’87, ‘‘I said to him ‘you apply for that’, and he applied and got it.

‘‘And of course it was just the ideal place because he could sail, we had a fishing boat, we could ski and we could go 4WD’ing and do all the things we loved doing.

‘‘At one stage I thought he might go to Auckland and I said, ‘well, you go, I’m not’, and then he settled down — he had a good life-work balance which a lot of teachers don’t always get.’’

He was a big advocate for the school’s annual outdoor education week, ‘‘even though it got a lot tougher with risk management and stuff like that’’, ex-teacher Mark Douglas says.

‘‘He would push the children,’’ Sylvia adds.

‘‘I don’t know how many hundreds of kids we took out, between the two of us, but I think all he ever had was one broken arm.

‘‘One day they couldn’t get parents to take kids snowboarding, so he thought, ‘I’ll have a go at that’, and he really enjoyed it’’’ — he’d been due to go boarding this Monday.

Douglas says Mel was ‘‘by far the best principal I ever taught under, he actually cared about his staff, to him they were the most important asset in the school’’.

After retiring in 2005, he served as a Queenstown Lakes councillor for three terms.

His mayor, Vanessa van Uden, who was also a school parent, says the kids loved him ‘‘because he cared and he was interested in them, and I think he brought the same thing to being a councillor’’.

‘‘He wasn’t a grandstander but he fought hard for the community and helped people get things done’’.

Sylvia says he ran just about every day for about 50 years, in all weathers.

He also had stints as Wakatipu Yacht Club commodore and Wakatipu Rugby Club president — another former rugby club president, Phil Wilson, says he was ‘‘a very good club man’’.

Sylvia says ‘‘we had a great life, we travelled, we did just about everything together, but we weren’t in each other’s pockets’’.

‘‘The hardest part is everyone’s just so shocked [at his death].’’

Mel’s also survived by sons Nick and David and grandchildren Arnica and Remus.

His funeral’s at 1pm tomorrow at the Queenstown Memorial Centre.

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