OBITUARY: John (Janek) Roy-Wojciechowski (John Roy) MNZM, OM (Poland), September 25, 1933 – August 23, 2025
John Roy – a great Howickian, New Zealander and man of Poland – has passed on.
It’s the end of an era. To use a respectful Māori description – a mighty Totara in our community has fallen. He had mana in multitudes and was 92.
Our Lady Star of the Sea Church in Howick’s Picton Street was full of a cross-section of people from the areas of society that John Roy walked – the Howick community, the Polish NZ community, business world, and the boating arena – and all the dignitaries attended to pay their respects, including Sir Don McKinnon, the former deputy prime minister and Commonwealth Secretary General.
The Roy family is large and multigenerational and there was a full turnout from John’s children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren, including heartfelt tributes and anecdotal recollections, in a service to celebrate his life led by Father John Fitzmaurice on Friday, August 29.
John Roy’s life was remarkable and interesting, and because he was such a high-achiever and moved in different circles and arenas, this obituary is a long feature containing the eulogy by his son Greg Roy, a letter of condolence from the President of Poland Karol Nawrocki, a eulogy by Poland Ambassador to New Zealand Patryk Błaszczak, and a recollection by longtime former Times’ journalist Marianne Kelly.
The Times Media family sends its sincere sympathies and condolences to the family and friends of John Roy.
John Roy’s second son Greg Roy read the eulogy:
“John Roy lived a fascinating and full life. When a close friend heard of Dad’s passing, he summed it up simply: “He accomplished more in one lifetime than most would in 10.” And he truly did.
Dad was born Janek Wojciechowski in Poland in 1933. If you’ve read the handout, you’ll notice his birthday is officially listed as the 25th of September – but even something as simple as knowing his correct birthday was taken from him.
It was just one of the many losses he endured as a child growing up in war-torn Poland.
To understand his beginnings, you need to know a little of Poland’s history. For most countries, World War I ended in 1918, but for Poland, fighting continued against Russia until 1920, in the battle for the eastern borderlands.
Dad’s father Jozef was a soldier in that war. Like many veterans, he was granted land by the Polish government for his service and settled with his wife, Helena, in a small village called Ostrówki, in Eastern Poland.
Together, they raised six children. Dad was the youngest.
But history soon intervened. In September 1939, Poland was invaded – Germany from the west and Russia from the east.
By December, the Soviet government had ordered Polish families in the eastern borderlands – territory that today lies in Belarus and Ukraine – to be deported to Siberian labour camps.
Before the deportations, the Soviets eliminated anyone they viewed as a threat.
Jozef, with his military background and social standing, was taken away and executed.
Soon after, in the middle of the night, Russian soldiers came for the family.
Dad, his mother, and siblings were forced onto trains bound for Siberia.
Dad never spoke much of his time in the camps. He was so young, and perhaps his mind shielded him from the worst of the horrors. But we know the suffering was immense.
Then, when Nazi Germany turned on Russia in 1941, the Soviets became allies of the West.
The camps were opened, and families were suddenly “free” – though in truth they had nowhere to go.
Like so many others, Dad’s family fled south, away from the brutal cold of Siberia, eventually reaching Persia – now Iran – where they were sheltered by an order of nuns.
But the hardships of the camps had taken their toll. On that journey, Dad’s mother passed away, leaving the children orphaned.
They stayed under the care of the nuns until 1944, when the New Zealand Government agreed to take in a group of displaced Polish children.
In 1944, Dad arrived in Wellington Harbour aboard the troop ship General George Randall, alongside 733 other Polish children, most of them orphans like him.
They were taken to the Pahiatua Camp, north of Wellington.
Originally, the children were expected to stay only until the war ended. But when peace finally came, they were offered the chance to remain in New Zealand – and it became their new home.
In 1947, at the age of 12, Dad began as a boarder at St Patrick’s College, Silverstream.
He had to start almost from scratch – learning English before he could truly learn anything else.
Numbers, though, came naturally to him. He also threw himself into school life, playing rugby – a sport that became one of his lifelong passions.
After school, Dad went on to university, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in accounting.
To pay his way, he worked part-time at the accounting firm Bowden, Bass and Cox.
It was there that he met a young woman who would change his life forever: Valerie Young, our Mum.
Their romance was swift and certain. Dad proposed on Mum’s 20th birthday, April 1, 1956, and they married the following year on September 28 at St Patrick’s Church in Kilbirnie.
Together, they made a practical decision about his long Polish surname – Wojciechowski – choosing to adopt the simpler Roy for his career, while still keeping the old name alive as part of his identity.
As a good Catholic couple, and without the distraction of television, a family soon followed!
Dad’s career went from strength to strength. After Bowden, Bass and Cox, he worked for W & R Fletcher, then for GH Mooney & Co, where he gained a taste for business and entrepreneurship.
He later became financial manager at GEC, helping the company transition from simply importing goods to manufacturing products locally.
In 1968, he accepted a position as financial controller with Charles Begg & Co in Auckland.
By then, Mum and Dad had five children, and the family moved into their home on Granger Road, just above Howick Beach and near Star of the Sea Catholic School.
It became their family home for the rest of their lives.
Working alongside businessman Charlie Pearson, Dad helped grow Charles Begg & Co into a powerhouse, acquiring more than 20 New Zealand companies.
Renamed Atlas Majestic, the business became known nationwide – almost every home had a white Atlas stove.
However, always looking for his next challenge, Dad left the security of corporate life and embarked on a journey to become a self-employed “company doctor” and quickly gained a reputation as the go-to-guy.
His specialty was saving struggling businesses – keeping them from receivership, turning failing divisions into profitable ones, and, wherever possible, protecting jobs.
His work spanned industries from forestry to fishing, from carpets to aviation.
During this period, he reconnected with a fellow Silverstream old boy, Peter Menzies.
Together, they engineered the takeover of Mainline Construction – transforming it into Mainzeal, a company whose cranes soon became a fixture on the Auckland skyline.
They also acquired Mair Astley, one of New Zealand’s largest export companies, accounting for 5 per cent of the nation’s total exports.
Dad’s ability to manage the financial side of multiple large enterprises at once was extraordinary.
But Dad’s life wasn’t only about business. By now, the family had grown to six children, and he made sure we shared in his passions, particularly his love of the sea.
It began with a canoe he built himself, launched with a family ceremony at Howick Beach.
From there, it grew into a succession of bigger boats, and eventually, even a boat-building company.
We all learned to waterski on family holidays in the Bay of Islands. In later years, he was content with the simple pleasure of rowing his classic skiff around the bay.
With Mum, he also enjoyed sailing trips overseas – around the Tongan islands, the Mediterranean, and the Greek Isles – as well as visits to both his homeland of Poland and Mum’s ancestral home of Scotland.
Grateful to New Zealand for the opportunities it gave him, Dad was always committed to giving back.
He supported charities, sporting clubs, Rotary, Life Education Trust, and the church.
He gave back to his old school, too, with Mainzeal contributing to rebuilding work at St Pat’s Silverstream.
Dad retired from corporate life at 60, but true to form, he never stopped. With Mum, he dedicated time to rediscovering his Polish roots.
One of his proudest legacies was the establishment of the Polish Museum in Howick, which continues to educate both children and adults about Polish history and heritage.
He also had the time to write his book about his life.
In March 1999, he was appointed Honorary Polish Consul to New Zealand. In 2017, he received Membership to the New Zealand Order of Merit for his services to the Polish community and for his philanthropy.
The Polish government also awarded him the Polish Order of Merit, recognising his lifelong dedication to strengthening the ties between his two homelands.
In his later years, our family gatherings grew larger and louder, spilling across two tables to fit children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren.
Dad’s joy at those chaotic dinners was unmistakable.
So, who was John Roy? A survivor. A successful businessman. A sportsman. A family man. A leader of the community. A proud citizen of two countries. An author. A philanthropist. A loving husband.
But to us, he was simply Dad, Grandad, or Great-Grandad. And that is how we will always remember him.”
President of the Republic of Poland, Karol Nawrocki:
“Dear Family Members and Friends of the late John Roy-Wojciechowski,
It is with deep sadness and a sense of great loss suffered by the Polish nation that I bid farewell to Mr John Roy-Wojciechowski.
One of the most distinguished Polish diaspora members has passed away.
He was a true pillar of the Polish community in New Zealand, a selfless community activist, and a custodian and promoter of the heritage of his ancestors.
Through his inspiring personal stance and many cultural and charitable works, Polish New Zealanders have gained ample opportunities to cultivate the memory of the land of their ancestors and, at the same time, the pride of belonging to a great family of people who think, feel, and speak Polish.
Born in 1933 in Ostrówki, Polesie, late John Roy-Wojciechowski survived the ordeal of the Soviet invasion of Poland and exile to Siberia.
Thanks to the Sikorski-Mayski Agreement between the Polish government in exile and the Soviet Union, he was able to leave the inhuman Soviet lands and reach Wellington, New Zealand, via Iran, with a group of Polish orphans known as the Pahiatua Children.
In adulthood, he achieved professional success and became involved in numerous social activities.
He was long-time president of the Association of Siberian Deportees in New Zealand, and from 1999 to 2013, he served with distinction as Honorary Consul of the Republic of Poland in Auckland.
In addition to his fascinating autobiography, John Roy-Wojciechowski left behind many fond memories.
This applies to me as well, as I had the honour of meeting him personally in 2020, when I visited New Zealand as director of the Museum of the Second World War in Gdańsk.
However, the “monument more enduring than bronze” commemorating the late John Roy-Wojciechowski took, above all, the form of his numerous contributions to his countrymen.
These include the Polish Heritage Trust and the unique, vibrant Polish Heritage Trust Museum in Auckland, his contribution to setting up the Otago Heritage Trust, his support to talented young people with Polish roots, the Polish Literary Club, the Polish language course at the University of Auckland, which had been established at Mr. Roy-Wojciechowski’s initiative, and his many other contributions to the Polish community in New Zealand.
As a Pole and as President of the Republic of Poland, I wholeheartedly thank the late John Roy-Wojciechowski for generously sowing so many important and valuable initiatives.
I trust that they will yield an equally abundant harvest in the form of comprehensive development and dynamic activity among the Polish community in New Zealand.
Eternal rest grant unto him, O Lord!
I ask the family and friends of the deceased and his grieving compatriots in New Zealand to accept my condolences.”
Eulogy by Poland Ambassador to New Zealand, Patryk Błaszczak:
“Father, dear Members of the Roy family, Members of the Auckland Consular Corps, dear Friends of the late John Roy-Wojciechowski,
I’m deeply honoured to stand before you to celebrate the remarkable life of the late John Roy-Wojciechowski.
A condolence letter to the Roy family has also been addressed by Anna Radwan, Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Poland, which I will pass on after the funeral.
As for myself, I have arrived in New Zealand only in January this year to take on the post of the Ambassador of the Republic of Poland to New Zealand, and I am very grateful to Ellen Roy for making it possible for me to have the honour of meeting Mr John Roy-Wojciechowski in person, at his home, even if briefly.
It’s hard to imagine the extreme hardship that John Roy-Wojciechowski endured as a child, being one of hundreds of thousands of Poles deported from the Soviet-occupied Poland in 1940 deep into the Soviet Union, where they were forced to toil in inhumane conditions.
Many did not survive the trip itself, which took many weeks, in cattle freight trains, with temperatures reaching minus 40 degrees.
Mr Roy-Wojciechowski’s father was shot by the Soviets, and his mother passed away, stricken by a disease caused by the hardships of Siberia.
He was not yet eight years old when he was placed in an orphanage in Isfahan after another gruelling journey across the Caspian Sea and to Iran.
In 1944, at 11 years old, after a sea voyage from one side of the world to the other, John Roy-Wojciechowski arrived in New Zealand, one of 733 Polish Pahiatua children, invited by the country’s government to stay until the war was over, and when the end of the war did not bring Poland liberation – to stay in New Zealand for good.
Each of the Pahiatua children holds within them a story of loss and trauma, of more pain than most of us will ever know.
But for John Roy-Wojciechowski, here in New Zealand, the tide finally turned.
He received a good education, he built an exceptionally successful career, he found love in his wife Valerie with whom he raised six children and had a happy family.
A self-made man of success and wealth, in every aspect of life.
Saint John Paul II said that the measure of one’s success will be the measure of one’s generosity.
And to me, although the list is long, John Roy-Wojciechowski’s greatest success is that through all the suffering he experienced as a child, he did not become bitter, but, on the contrary, generous and giving: to his local community, to the Polish community in New Zealand, but also to Poland, the country of his birth, for whom he served as Honorary Consul for 15 years and whose heritage he so proudly embraced, preserved and displayed at the Polish Heritage Trust Museum in Howick.
Through decades of work, charity and philanthropy, John Roy-Wojciechowski gained respect and recognition from the communities he so meaningfully impacted along his journey.
For his services to the Polish community in Aotearoa, he was appointed to the New Zealand Order of Merit in 2017 and was awarded the Commander’s Cross of the Order of Merit of the Republic of Poland in 2018.
Indeed, Poland could not have had a better or more committed advocate here in New Zealand, and for this I and my fellow countrymen will be forever grateful.
May he rest in peace. Niech spoczywa w pokoju.”
Marianne Kelly worked twice for Times Media in her lengthy journalism career, and during her second stint met and interviewed John Roy on several occasions:
“Written with love for the man and his family: John (Jan) Roy-Wojciechowski was a superb combination of a wily business operator and a dedicated family man.
He made no secret of it, once telling me, ‘Marianne I have made a lot of money’ – money which he spread generously throughout his beloved Howick community.
His book, A Strange Outcome. The Remarkable Story of a Polish Child still takes a special place on my bookshelves.
Sir Don McKinnon, Commonwealth Secretary-General at the time, called the story ‘a triumph of humanity over the darkest of tragedies and cruelty’.
I’ve read it more than once, each time marvelling at the extraordinary journey he and his siblings made to reach New Zealand’s shore in Wellington as part of a contingent of Polish refugee children.
John and his beloved wife, the late Valerie, enjoyed a lovely family home overlooking Howick Beach where he vociferously rejected news of an outpouring of refugees in Europe, maintaining they were politically motivated, not the genuine thing.
He should have known. He was the genuine thing.
The decision to put his wealth back into Howick, particularly the renowned Polish Museum, will remain a wonderful legacy to the community he loved.
Haere Ra e hoa.”
