My grandmother has always encouraged her children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren to be welcoming, to be kind, and of the importance of family. She had a long, happy marriage to my grandfather, Jim Belich, who left us five years ago. He was born on the gum fields of the North and remembered canvassing in support of Labour's first Prime Minister, Michael Joseph Savage. On the night of the 1935 election, he remembered gathering at the only home in the area with a radio to listen as the results came in. He was later an active member of Walter Nash's electorate committee in Lower Hutt, and, much later in his life, after a career in advertising, which also involved Norman Kirk's 1972 election campaign, he was elected the first Labour mayor of Wellington in 1986. 