Eugene's impact

It’s time we acknowledge the help of a particular person when we are writing some of our stories.
Between us, Fran and I have a large collection of books related to New Zealand history - in fact the stranger the book the better.
But few have been as helpful as books written by Eugene Grayland.
If we are short of inspiration, the books written by him never fail to give us an idea.
Eugene Charles Grayland was born in 1916 to Charles and Anne Grayland.
He began writing at primary school and just never stopped. He partly grew up in Hawke’s Bay.
His career was in journalism and he worked for so many newspapers, magazines and journals in various capacities that it would take up most of this post to write them all down.
But along with that, he wrote books. He started his own private printing company Colenso Press and began putting out his own books.
They are not in print now but they do tell compelling stories. New Zealand Disasters, More New Zealand Disasters, Tarawera, Famous New Zealanders, More Famous New Zealanders and New Zealand Sensations are just a few. Many were published along with his wife Valerie who wrote detective novels under the name V Merle Grayland.
But what makes Eugene’s work so special is the detail of his stories. Not just the extraordinary tales he tells, but how much fact is in them.
Some are relatively small disasters by today’s scale but he never fails to use a name if he has it, telling the stories from the human point of view.
And it’s because of this he is still having an impact.
Deb read about the Eskdale floods from 1938 in one of Eugene’s books. In the story was a little line about a man trapped in a house after a slip rammed into it, causing a beam to pin him to his bed.
There wasn't anything about his name or what happened to him, so we went looking. Sure enough - in one newspaper article of the time was William Lee’s name and the fact he was a retired soldier.
That led to a series of events that are ongoing to this day. We found Mr Lee’s grave and it turned out he had no headstone, which led to his family being found and a headstone made for him.
We were honoured to be part of that. But from that came the realisation that there were other veterans who did not have headstones and the nationwide search was on.
Since then more have been properly honoured and had their graves marked.
Eugene himself died in 1976 and is buried in Waikumete Cemetery. The little plaque that marks his place doesn’t reflect the impact his work continues to have.​