7 Nov 2013

Retiring printer

From Afternoons, 2:18 pm on 7 November 2013

Fifty-nine years ago, a wide eyed teenager from Runanga on the West Coast walked into the Greymouth Evening Star newspaper looking for a job, and it changed his life. George McKenzie started as an apprentice lino operator, spending nearly six decades working in the newspaper printing industry. Fifty-two of those years were at the Nelson Mail, where he finally retired this week. He has helped get the newspaper out with historic headlines, including those involving his own family - his brother Dave famously won the Boston Marathon in 1967. Times and technology have changed dramatically since then, and now George Mckenzie has decided it is time to go.