He never actually lived here but Alan Lovegrove loved working in Raglan for 21 years – and the townsfolk, in turn, took him to heart.
“RIP Alan, you were a star in the community,” commented a longtime local at the end of a Facebook post which told of his death, aged 84, late last month.
“You were the undisputed nicest guy in town,” commented another.
And from yet another: “Alan was one of the best, lots of chats, laughs, never without a smile, our family adored him.”
These were just a few of 100-odd online sentiments fondly recalling Alan’s kindness and helpfulness at Raglan Video – the shop he opened at the lower end of Bow St, later moving premises to Electric Ave roughly where Zinnia is now.
“Alan definitely did his time and service in our community,” one of the Tukiri whanau also commented. “I remember the buzz when he first opened the doors to the video shop.”
That was back in 1997, and Alan had three months to trial a business while his landlord wasn’t at all convinced it would work. But succeed it did, becoming something of an institution about town over two decades.
During the 90s there were no streaming services like Netflix or Lightbox, and television reception in the district was patchy at best. Nor was there a lot to do here on a wet weekend.
So Alan – who’d previously had video shops in Nawton Mall and Hillcrest – took a punt, bringing his kind of entertainment to town at a time when only the BP service station was dabbling in the rental video market.
Alan’s son Paul told the Chronicle last week his father had a lifelong love of movies, dating back to his youth when he had to hand-mow the lawn to earn sixpence to attend the matinees.
He enjoyed manning the Raglan shop so much that he continued working well past retirement age, Paul added, closing down only seven years ago.
“Technology has changed and you’ve got to move on,” Alan acknowledged at the time.
Paul recalls that when the shop closed Alan hung some of the leftover DVD discs from fishing line to make reflective bird scarers in his “treasured garden” back home in Hamilton.
Alan would’ve loved to move to Raglan permanently, says Paul, but it wasn’t to be, even though his wife Fran’s parents had a bach for years in Raglan West.
Alan was also a keen fisherman, Paul reveals, his record catches being a 20lb snapper off Raglan and a 16lb salmon at Vancouver Island, where the father of three also had family including grandsons.
by Edith Symes
