What many locals may not realise is that he is responsible for the Botany Downs name.
In 1953 he leased a section of the Wilson farm and named it Botany Downs – farming the property until 1967 when it was subdivided in to residential lots and the Botany Downs community created.
In 1994 the Howick and Pakuranga Times reported on the stir caused when a planned retail development on the corner of Ti Rakau Dr and East Tamaki Rd (now Chapel Rd) was marketed as the Botany Downs District Centre.
At the time Mr Carr accused the developers for “pinching” the name and along with others living in the “real” Botany Downs, worried the area would loose its identity if the name was spread.
“It will really be confusing for people to have a subdivision at one end of Botany Rd and a shopping centre at the other,” he told the paper.
He later took up agriculture contracting throughout the district - rotary hoeing, hedge cutting, silage and haymaking etc and owned three tractors, three hay balers and a truck along with all other hay making and silage equipment which he did for many years with his son Veron’s help.
He used to help the schools with the tractors if needed for any cause, whether taking down goal posts or cutting cricket pitches.
Mr Carr worked 11 years at the Pakuranga Children’s Health Camp and then general handyman, groundsman/gardener for English Sewing (Coates) for about 12 years.
Mr Carr later took up a gardener handyman job with the Howick Manor rest home, for three years until 2005, where he was actually older than all the patients in the home.
“For a man who survived just short of his 90th birthday he was a person who used up the best part of his nine lives,” they wrote.
His love of the outdoors certainly gave him a fair share of adventures, from scampering up a cabbage tree to escape a rampaging wild boar to being shot in the leg by an unknown hunter while crossing a river.
Born in a hut at Carter’s Mill at Horopito, King Country in February 1918, Mr Carr was the eighth of 11 children of Ethel and Samuel Carr. (Verdun named after the Battle of Verdun in France).
He survived the big bush fires which burnt out the areas of Raetihi, Ohakune and Horopito and also the Black Plague epidemic which broke out later that year in which about seven people died.
His mother and sister, Dot, were the only two that never caught the flu and made coppers full of broth to feed all the ill and probably saved many lives.
A love of motorbikes began as a teenager, later replaced by midget car racing at speedway.
In his later years he was more contented with his appreciation for classic cars, particulary the Austin A35 and his commitment was rewarded by way of accolades both private and public.
It was fitting that his Austin 35 led a guard of honouor of other vehicle at his service.
“The TV remote was an on-off button to him and it was mostly TV1 for the news and weather that he was most interested in. He was multi-talented and successful in almost everything that he turned his hand to.
“For a man who only had five years education he still displayed a broad knowledge of all aspects of life.”
Mr Carr is survived by his four sons, wife Barabara and extended family.
