| Abstract |
Gordon Bedford Dawson was born in Connecticut (USA) on 29th September 1929. Gordon had a rather disrupted childhood. His parents were divorced not long after he was born and soon after he travelled with his mother, Jean to London (UK), where she met and married Graham Dawson, a New Zealand architect. In 1937 the family moved to New Zealand, settling in Wellington. At this time New Zealand was in the depths of a polio epidemic and most schools were closed that year, disrupting Gordon’s education for the first time. In 1938 he was enrolled at Friends School, a Quaker boarding school in Wanganui. In 1944 he moved back to live with his parents in Wellington and attended Wellington College until 1946, when his mother thought it would be a good idea to visit her family back in Redding, Connecticut for a family reunion. While there, his mother decided he should experience some American education. The American and New Zealand education systems were totally different and Gordon had to repeat a part year, and attend summer schools to catch up with the rest of his class. He particularly appreciated the English literature part of the American curriculum with Shakespeare, Chaucer etc. He completed his high school education at Redding in June 1948. His mother and two brothers had already returned to New Zealand and aged 18, he made his way alone by train across America, then by ship, back to NZ. |