Obituary - Les McGraw

It is with great sadness, that we record the passing of the Club's President, Les McGraw. Les had been in Southland Hospital for 3 weeks at the time and was hoping to travel to Christchurch to live when he came out, but unfortunately he passed away on the 9th of August.
Les was a man with many talents, a great photographer, and in his early days a fine skier, mountaineering, a hunter and trout fisherman, and having spent part of his early childhood being brought up in the Invercargill Fire Station, where his father worked, a fine taste for food. His first taste of motor sport was in rallying with his wife Helen, but with her passing, when Emma his daughter was about 12 and Nathan his son about 14, resulted in him giving up his own activities to devote his time to caring for them.

He caught the motor sport bug again, when after his first brush with heart problems his brother Ken came up with a cunning plan to get him up and running again by suggesting that he buy a RX7 and get back into night rallying, as he had done with Helen before the children were born, Ken was surprised to get a phone call not long after saying they had to go to Gore to look at a car, which was duly purchased, and off he started again in motor sport.
With young Emma as the navigator, they went competing in every winter night event for that year, winning the Southland Sports Car Club championship for that year.
With Ken into racing Classic cars, Les thought that he to should have a crack at this, and set about with Barry Leitch, and built up one of Barry’s Super Seven cars and hit the classic scene racing at Teretonga, Timaru, Christchurch, and the Queenstown and Waimate Street races. I guess some of us will well remember his big off at Ruapuna doing a couple of barrel rolls and landing in a cloud of dust on its wheels, which where pointing in different directions, unharmed himself, but he did have to sit down for a while, to let the blood drain back into the rest of his body, I remember that well!

At the time this was all going on, he was also serving motor sport well in other areas, serving on the committee of the Southland Sports Car Club, and becoming the President, and with a further brush with heart problems, his racing exploits came to a end, with his race licence being revoked for safety reasons, not that this was to stop Les from participating in motor sport, he moved to the admin side of the sport, where he developed computer programmes for rally route books and recording results, and with his brother Ken, had massive input into making the Southern Festival of Speed the series that it is today, with competitors from all around the world racing and showing the public, cars that they had only dreamed and read about racing  else where.
He was the Pit Manager for the Hydro Link Racing Team, and Rick Michels will miss his laid back approach and ready wit and laugh in what sometimes could be moments of intense stress, and his presence in Rick's workshop will be missed.
Bruce and Diana Fox, whose home was within walking distance,  where many a bottle of red wine was tested, the rights and wrongs of motor sport and many other subjects where put to rest, with his keen insight to many things, will also miss his Friday night ritual, but I am told that going home again could be a problem, but would always be at Rick's workshop door for a early start on Saturday morning! I feel sure that the guys from overseas for the SFOS and run by Rick, will miss his quick wit.

Les also put a lot of time into running the club as our President, and was very proud of the Club taking up the running of the Levels round of the Southern Festival of Speed, and taking the series to new highs. He was never worried about his own situation, but was more concerned about what he could do for others and I know we all have our own Les stories, even though he was born an Aussie, he was a great mate and friend to us all, he was going to step back from the committee this year and get into a bit of fishing, but was looking forward to the role of Past President, so he did not lose touch with the people and sport he loved so much, and I know at a committee level he will be sorely missed.

Roger Eade of CMRC