Reading Mike Beckett’s death notice felt like another constant in the world had been taken from us. He’d been the editor of the Martinborough Star since its inception seventeen years ago and I had been writing a column for the paper for about the same length of time.
He was a household name in Featherston where I lived because one of the supermarkets there had been his family business. Although long sold on, it still bore his name and even today some older Featherstonians still refer to it as such.
I never asked Mike why he and his wife Anne shifted to Martinborough but it while he was living there in 2004 that he successfully ran for council, the same term that I was elected mayor.
Mike was an effective councillor. He cared about the community he lived in and represented but was still able to take a district-wide approach to decision making. He read his papers, was measured in his approach but was prepared to get stuck into things he cared about.
He loved being on council and was keen to stand for a second term. Sadly, his family commitments meant it couldn’t be so but that was when the idea arose to launch the Martinborough Star.
Mike was a good editor. I received a timely reminder of the copy deadline every month but he never tried to influence what I wrote about. He would at times express frustration that other local body politicians were too busy to write for the paper saying that they obviously didn’t appreciate the free platform that the paper provided.
I knew that Mike was unwell because we had been swapping war stories by email a couple of months ago when I was unable to meet a deadline. In his usual way though, Mike hid just how ill he was. He just kept working with the team at the Star, never giving readers so much as a hint of his personal battles.
I guess though that times change and we all come and go. The Martinborough Star has gone from strength to strength through the years to become the professional and well-read publication it is today. A new editor will bring their own style to this great community publication and contributors will have to adjust.
There will however never be another Mike Beckett. He was the first editor of the Martinborough Star and nothing can change that.
