Hunt, Hubert

Hubert Milton Hunt was born in Waitara on 8 February 1924, the third of four children raised by Leonard Hunt and Mavis Eliza Healy Hunt (nee Olsson).

Hubert was working as a farmhand when the Second World War began, and he initially joined the territorial service, leaving for training camp in Whanganui on 3 June 1941. His older brother Norman Phillip Hunt (1919-1999) had already volunteered in May 1940 and was serving as a Private with the Third Echelon of the Second NZEF when he was captured in Crete in the middle of 1941. Held as a prisoner of war at Dulag VIII-A in Gorlitz, Germany, Norman did not return home until September 1945.

Hubert was officially called up in April 1942, one of more than 300,000 Kiwi men between the ages of 19 and 45 conscripted during the conflict. He served as an Ordinary Seaman with the Royal New Zealand Navy and was later awarded the War Medal 1939-1945 and the New Zealand Service War Medal.

Hubert married Edith Lorna Todd (1923-1972) in 1946 and the couple made their home in Auckland where Hubert worked as a painter and later a fisherman. Edith died in 1972 and Hubert married his second wife Vivianne Amelda Attwood in 1977.

Hubert Hunt died on 24 November 1994 and is buried alongside Vivianne at Waikaraka cemetery in Ōnehunga.