Jo-Anne La Grouw

Charity champion, wager of campaigns, arts advocate. Meeting the woman committed to giving back 

Words Jill Nicholas

Pictures/video Stephen Parker

When the names of those elected to the Rotorua Trust are announced on November 19 don’t expect to see Jo-Anne La Grouw’s among them.

It won’t be because the unthinkable’s happened – that she lost her place at the trustee’s table of six.

The reason’s much more logical. She didn’t seek re-election to the position she’s held for 18 years. 

She’s stepped down “because it’s time” and to invest even more of herself into the multiplicity of community organisations she loves with a passion.

The one she devotes the most hours to is the New Zealand Lockwood Aria which she’s spearheaded for a quarter of a century.

It’s Australasia’s largest annual singing competition, attracting entrants from throughout the country and overseas, Russia and America included.

For 22 years finalists have been backed by the full Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra.  

She’s adamant the aria will remain Rotorua-based.

“Auckland keeps wanting to steal it. If they did it would lose that special feel about it. Singers and judges love coming here, experiencing that special Rotorua manaakitanga.”  

This year’s finals are on Saturday night. She’s worked for months to get such a prestigious event not just on stage but the first in the newly revamped Sir Howard Morrison Centre. 

It has, she admits, been a challenge but it’s challenge that powers her.    

She is a woman in perpetual motion. Invariably she’s on the move for the benefit of others.

Should that sound a tad trite, it isn’t.

Community a lifetime commitment 

Immersing herself in her community is what she’s done all her adult life.

Her father was her mentor. Growing up in New Plymouth, she followed the example he set her of the importance of service to others.

As she chats candidly to In Profile we are given an uninhibited insight into this catwalk-elegant woman’s background and her commitment to investing so much of her time and energy where she sees a need. 

Jo-Anne’s earlier years weren’t obstacle free.

At school and beyond she laboured under a learning handicap – dyslexia. Her intermediate years were spent in a special class.

“I was reading words incorrectly, I’d have to reread lines several times. They would jump around, I’d see yellow lines through sentences.

I’m still poor at spelling, but I’ve improved a lot.”

It was through her involvement in the Rotorua Trust that Jo-Anne stumbled on a solution to her reading difficulties – Irlen glasses.

These have precision tinted lenses that filter out wavelengths of light that interrupt the reading process.

“We had an application from a local Irlen specialist to fund glasses for those she was treating. I went home and Googled Irlen. It described how things moved on the page for some people with dyslexia. I said to myself ‘that is me’. Since I’ve had Irlen glasses I’ve not had problems reading.”

Jo-Anne’s now on a crusade to secure government funding for families who have children with reading difficulties but who don’t have Community Service Cards. Those with them have automatic access to corrective glasses, those without don’t. That’s despite often being unable to afford them. It’s this type of discrimination their champion finds intolerable. 

Campaigning is second nature to her.

She’s presently pushing for the Sir Howard Morrison Centre and other council facilities to become more affordable for local groups.

“I have a granddaughter who skates at national level. It’s cheaper for local skaters to travel to Hamilton to train than hire a venue here. That’s absolutely unacceptable.”   

Hurdles conquered

Dyslexia is not the only hurdle she’s conquered.  

A side-effect has been the migraines she still suffers, often daily.    

There’s also been a three-pronged confrontation with cancer.

At 20 and while working as a therapeutic radiographer at Taranaki Base Hospital, she discovered a lump in her breast. 

“I went to our head of surgery who I was actually treating for breast cancer. She said ‘It will probably just be a cyst’. I ended up having a lumpectomy.”

Five years later a lump appeared in her groin. The initial diagnosis was a hernia. It was found to be malignant.

A hysterectomy revealed an ovarian tumour.

“Each time I had surgery but no follow-up treatment. Chemo wasn’t used so readily then.”

Her unequivocal advice to others is “If you find a lump anywhere don’t ignore it. Get it checked. If you do, survival probably rises to 100 per cent.”

Turning to happier topics she reveals she’s been horse mad since her toddler days. 

 She still is, but hasn’t owned one for 15 years

“ I got my first horse at intermediate. I didn’t have show ponies but entered a lot of carnivals, A&P shows, hunts. 

“We didn’t float them in, we rode for miles.

My parents followed me with their hazard lights on. We left home in the dark, returned in the dark. “

They may have escorted her but they didn’t throw money at her.  

Selling beer bottles, mowing lawns

Jo-Anne’s first foray into what’s now her legendary ability to fund raise was mowing lawns and selling empty beer bottles.”

“In those days you’d get ten shillings [a dollar] for a crate of them.”

As a teenager she and a girlfriend set out to ride from New Plymouth to Rotorua.      

“We were going to sleep in barns along the way. We’d covered 30kms on the first day when my horse rolled and broke a leg. We were 15kms from the nearest settlement.

“A vet wouldn’t come out because it was New Year’s Eve. A local farmer had to destroy my horse . . .  I suspect my parents were secretly grateful to that vet. 

“I look back now and wonder how we’d have coped with all the challenges along the way: the Forgotten Highway, tunnels. You don’t think about that as a 15-year-old.”

Radiography wasn’t her first career choice after leaving school.

“I wanted to do horticulture but my father said girls were either nurses or teachers.

“I went to Duncan and Davies [New Plymouth plant nursery] and told them I wanted to be an apprentice. They said the work was too hard for girls.”   

She joined the hospital, remaining five years as a full-time therapeutic radiographer.

Despite heading the department, she couldn’t qualify because there wasn’t anyone to train her to the required standard.  

She left but continued her involvement with patients.    

Jo-Anne being Jo-Anne she set up a cancer register and volunteered for the Cancer Society.

Meeting ‘Mr Lockwood’

She went to work in her mother’s maternity shop, taking over the baby and children’s clothing section.

During this period she married and had a son. The union was relatively brief.

She’d been on her own for ten years when she met Lockwood Homes owner Joe La Grouw. A mutual friend introduced them.

“He had a friend with an antique shop in Auckland and was in New Plymouth for an auction. I saw him again at a restaurant a few months later. It [their relationship] grew from there.”

Before she joined Joe in Rotorua Jo-Anne had opened Carousel, a childrenswear shop in Tutanekai St.

They married the day they moved into their Kawaha Point home.

There’s a mischievous sparkle about her when she maintains it was coincidental she’s always loved Lockwood houses.    

“I certainly never thought I’d end up living in one for 35 years.”

Jo-Anne tends to their two-acre garden without outside help.  It’s become the setting for numerous fund raising events, festivals and exhibitions. 

The privilege of sharing

The La Grouws adore art in all its forms.

Their collection of paintings includes a Chagall, a Picasso, a Frances Hodgkins, Goldies and historical New Zealand scenes. They aren’t hidden away in a vault

“There’s no point on having it and not sharing it with the community.”

This is no token gesture, it’s genuine and very much from the heart. 

For them, collecting’s an eclectic occupation.  Jo-Anne’s aim is to bring joy through art. Their garden is a gallery in its own right. It’s filled with quirky pieces. 

“I’m sitting here talking to you looking at a bronze frog smiling happily and that makes me smile.”

With her support of the arts and music via the aria and other local events surely Jo-Anne is super-talented in these areas herself?

Our query generates peals of laughter. “Absolutely not. I’m not artistic in any way. I don’t sing or play an instrument. I can’t paint but I love the arts in all their forms.”

She may not be artistic but when it comes to fund raising her approach is often straight out of left field.     

Fundraising creatively

Bog-standard raffles and sausage sizzles aren’t for her. “I think anyone who fund raises needs to look at something a bit novel. 

“For Life Education we had people dye their hair outrageous colours and held annual midwinter dips at Tikitapu with participants wearing crazy costumes.”

More recently the Friends of the Museum, which she’s co-chaired, raised close to $10,000 after Jo-Anne came up with another creative brainwave.

“I thought there must be something we could do with all the tiles that came off the museum roof. We got artists to paint them and we auctioned them. Tame Iti [activist and artist] came on board with a work that sold for $1700.”

The Rotorua Artists’ Group is donating 25 per cent of their sale price from their Lockwood Show Homes Village exhibition to the Mamaku Volunteer Fire Brigade. 

“Our volunteers do an amazing job.  From our house we hear the Ngongotaha siren going off up to three times a day. These people put their lives at risk. They need all the support they can get.”

When she sold her childrenswear business she opened a gift shop specifically to raise funds for Riding for the Disabled to move across town and build a covered arena. 

“I realised how many times the children were missing out on their classes when the weather was too bad to ride in the open.”

Her enterprise added $121,000 to the $500,000 the Rotorua Trust provided.

More was needed.

“Joe and I hopped on a plane. We went to trusts around New Zealand asking for money for the arena.” Another $500,000 was raised.

“They said afterwards if we hadn’t persisted we wouldn’t have got the money.”

She’s also raised funds for the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra. She speculates that was the reason she was invited to join its board. 

“It’s biggest job is raising money.”   

“Just me, a person”

Obvious as this will now be, persistence is another of Jo-Anne’s steely character traits.

She may talk frankly about her artistic passions, the charities she champions, the  campaigns she wages but an invitation to define herself is met with a blank stare

To her she is “Just me, a person.”

Something else she won’t tell you is she was made a Member of the Order of New Zealand Order of Merit (MNZM) in 1998. There are a slew of other awards, including one for service to local business and, surprise surprise, the community.

“I do wish people wouldn’t recognise me. I find it embarrassing to get rewarded for what I love doing. I just want to give back.”

Don’t dare toy with the idea that with her Rotorua Trust tenure behind her “Just me, a person” will be putting herself out to pasture.

She’s signed up for even more community commitment. She’s to become a Parksyde volunteer and as an Age Concern councillor.

 “So I’m getting age appropriate.”