Te Kare Cecilia (Papuni) Baxter (1927 - 2009)

Born 17 May 1927 in Opunake, Taranaki, New Zealand

Ancestors

Wife of James Keir Baxter — married 9 Dec 1948 (to 1969) in St John’s Cathedral, Napier, New Zealand

Descendants

Died 30 Dec 2009 at age 82 in Wellington, New Zealand

Biography

In 1927 a daughter was born at Opunake in Taranaki to a young Maori couple named Mary and Jack Papuni. It was their second daughter, and they named her Te Kare, but the little girl would never know her mother, who died of septicemia a fortnight later. Deep in grief, Jack returned with their older daughter to his Whakatohea Iwi on the East Coast of the North Island, leaving the baby to be raised by her maternal grandmother.

As an infant, Te Kare Papuni suffered from a skin condition that required specialist dressing, a task regularly performed by a local Pakeha nurse named Ethel Sturm. When Te Kare’s grandmother fell ill, Ethel and her husband Bert Sturm (of Ngati Porou), fostered and eventually adopted the little girl, re-christening her Jacqueline Cecilia Sturm.^[1]

A poet and writer of short stories.^[2]

Sources

1. ↑ http://www.nzepc.auckland.ac.nz/kmko/09/ka_mate09_millar.asp
2. ↑ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacqueline_Sturm