Weekly winner! 'THE STORY THAT CHANGED MY LIFE'

Kay won a story competition then won in life when she met her great love Bill

- Fleur Guthrie

In January 1953, there was some big news in the little Coromandel village of Te Puru. One of their locals, a talented 12-year-old girl called Kay Davis, had won the essay competition in the New Zealand Woman’s Weekly, which scored her a new summer wardrobe and photoshoot.

It was the talk of the town.

“Mum had just picked me up from my piano lessons and we were walking home when the town storekeeper came bounding out, shrieking, ‘She won! She won!’” recalls Kay, now 84.

“We didn’t know what he was talking about. Apparently, he’d told the whole village before I knew!

“The news had come by telegram through the post and, as he was the postmaster as well, he’d written out the telegram to deliver it to me. To be honest, I thought I’d won a wooden wardrobe to store clothes in!”

It was an amazing boost for the young schoolgirl, whose own childhood was tinged with sadness.

Suffering from chronic asthma, she had spent a lot of time off school. For her first seven years, Kay had also been in foster care as her single mother had initially been unable to both work and care for her.

“When I was growing up, living apart from my mum, I knew all about sadness,” she shares. “Mum had to work to keep me and in those days, she didn’t have childminders, so I was put into care with a wonderful family on a Waiomu farmlet.