By ploughing the profit back into the firm and taking minimum wages for ourselves for some years, we were able to buy machinery and build the firm up. We were advised by our accountant to register the firm as Cooper Brothers Limited. We did this and I became Managing Director. When I was young I often complained that Edwin had privileges because he was older. He was bigger and stronger and knew more. It seemed that I would never catch up. Now I had caught up and become head of the firm. Edwin was a good man and we worked well together.

As the pressures of war time were relieved I had more time to enjoy my family. In a way Sunday became the family day. My religion did give us the benefit of one day a week free of normal activity. When the children were small we sometimes took them to uncle Fred's farm at Manawaru and later camping at various places-There was no further trouble in employing additional staff. Indeed for some time we had a waiting list of prospective employees. We collected personnel of excellent quality who worked together co-operatively with humour and goodwill. The lunch room was full of chatter and laughter. On one occasion the Social Committee arranged a picnic at a beach. When everyone assembled including wives, husbands and children, we had two buses full of people. I looked around and realised that all these people were being supported by work flowing through the establishment. They had placed their faith in the success of the firm for their well-being. I felt humbled and at the same time responsible to treat them fairly and with dignity.

Of course, occasionally a staff problem would appear. The Printers Union subscriptions would be collected each week and placed in a drawer for the secretary. One day a foreman came to me and told me that the recent employee of a couple of months was stealing the Union money. "Are you sure?" I asked. "Yes, we have been suspicious for a couple of weeks so we marked some notes and when we asked him for some change he gave us back our marked notes", "What would you like me to do?" I asked. "We have talked about it and none of us trust him nor are we happy to work with him". "Tell him I want to see him" I said. He arrived shortly afterwards in my office and admitted his offence. I paid him the legal extra one week's wage and dismissed him on the spot. Apparently, he decided to see the South Island before seeking other employment. He collected his wife from her place of work and headed south on his motorbike. Two weeks later we heard that he was involved in a road accident and had been killed.

We had another excellent tradesman cutter who was nearing retirement age of sixty five. He started eating his lunch near his machine. I asked him to please use the lunch room as scraps of food could attract mice. He complied but started hindering the bindery girls in little ways. I had to reprimand him and he returned to his efficient ways for a while. As things finally turned out, about every six months the bindery girls would ask me to "blow him up again". It was quite funny really. He was old enough to be my father yet I had to stage anger every now and again to get his cooperation. He never did reveal what his problem was- The day he turned sixty five he retired.

The bindery girls used to put their half smoked cigarettes on ash trays in the centre of the work bench. Some remark suggesting I did not know the difficulty of giving up smoking prompted me to say that I used to smoke. I picked up a cigarette off the ash tray and inhaled the smoke. What amazed me was how easily I could have gone back to smoking almost ten years after giving it up.

The Broadway building was becoming too small for us. We had to find room for new machinery and equipment. I climbed into the ceiling and discovered a large empty area- The roof was ten or more feet above the ceiling and sloped gently down toward the back of the building. Immediately I could see that, by putting in a weight-bearing floor instead of the ceiling and a staircase, we could use half the area of the building for office space without raising the roof. I drew up a plan, got a permit and commenced alterations. The ground floor of the original building was heart Australian Jarrah So we replaced it with concrete and used the beautiful red Jarrah for the polished floor of our new office. The Jarrah was so tough that nails would often bend when we tried to drive them in. Many boards had to be drilled before nailing down.

Over some years we had built up a very good relationship with Stan Palmer who was manager of a family horticultural business. A.W. Palmer & Sons became one of our biggest customers. Work for them included the printing of spring and autumn catalogues in full colour. One day our foreman Les informed us that he had been offered the position of manager in another small printing firm. We wished him well. It later appeared that he had approached some of our customers including A.W.Palmer & Sons for work. Soon afterwards Stan came to see me. He had no complaints about the service we were giving him but he "wanted to give Les a go", could he have all his photo blocks please-1 explained that they had all been greased, wrapped and filed away and would take some hours to retrieve for him. To be honest, I felt peeved with Les for stealing a good customer from the firm who had provided him with security and a good living for years. I also felt disappointed that Stan was so easily sold. So I bit my lip and explained that Les was a good foreman but that did not make him a good manager. He could easily run into organisational difficulties. I assured Stan that if he was not satisfied with his new printer, I would be very pleased to come to his rescue.

We set about filling the gap in our work schedule and forgot about Stan. Two years later when we were re-modeling the front of our building, I was using the lunch room as a temporary office, Stan rang and asked if we could print a catalogue for him, "Would you like a quotation" I asked. "No, just print it" he replied. They say that if you get an old customer back, you will have him forever. This proved to be true. Stan stayed with us for the rest of my printing experience.

About this time we were receiving letters from father telling us about mother's illness. She was suffering a good deal of pain and had to go to hospital. The doctors did not seem to know what was wrong with her. She was sent home and returned to hospital several times. To reduce the pain they suggested that she have hot baths. Father was worried about mother and her suffering.

Then suddenly the British Government decided to withdraw from Palestine in May 1948. British subjects were advised to leave the country at very short notice. Father packed what he could into a box in which his printing paper had arrived. Its size was about 915 mm by 585 mm by 500 mm. He drilled two holes in each end and made rope handles then consigned the box to us in New Zealand. Father also filled a couple of suitcases with clothes and walked out of the house leaving behind all their household possessions, the printing plant and equipment, everything.

Mother was taken from the hospital to the airport. A seat had been removed from the aircraft so mother's stretcher could be placed in a fore and aft position. Father could sit beside her. He said that, as they approached London descending through a thick cloud cover into a cold miserable day, he felt very depressed. His wife was very ill, his home together with almost all they possessed was abandoned, he was landing in a strange city where no friends would meet him and his wife would immediately be transferred to a London hospital. Father found a Christian couple where he could stay. Each day he visited the hospital until mother died three or four months later and was buried in London at the age of fifty seven. The post-mortem showed that she had suffered a painful cancer. I was adjusting the folding machine while the staff were having their lunch when the cable arrived telling us that mother had died. Even though her passing was not altogether unexpected I was overwhelmed with sadness and anger. Sadness because I loved my good mother and because she had never seen her three grandchildren. I was angry against a supposed almighty God for the cruel and unjust treatment of my mother. How could a supposed all powerful, loving and just God treat such a devout and loyal servant so cruelly? Every moral or ethical sense in my being was offended. I looked through the window at my staff eating lunch. As an employer, I would do whatever I Justly could for any one of them. How could a just God, whom mother had served so faithfully all her short life allow, or cause her to die so painfully? Was God less loving and honourable than I was? Was God all powerful or was he powerless, unjust and un-loving or was he there at all? Almighty, perhaps, but not just and loving at the same time. That is how I lost respect for the God for whom I was spending so much time and money. I could find no answer to my urgent need, I experienced just a hollow sense of a silent void, I could find no reason for such a callous reward for my mother's lifetime of service.

This was my first real doubt about God. It was pointless and not morally right that an almighty, loving God should allow, or cause, undeserved suffering to anyone, much less to a person who had loved and served him so well. What about the innocent millions who suffer from what is usually called 'Acts of God'; floods, famines, plagues and calamities of all kinds^ How could I love such an unloving God who could destroy the innocent indiscriminately? Something was very seriously wrong, I would start a search to find an answer but never did succeed. That search has changed my whole life.

When Edwin and I built our own homes we each took time off from printing to help the builder while the other managed the business. I bought a quarter acre freehold section at Hillsborough for $ 150. It faced north to the road and overlooked the Manukau harbour to the east; a beautiful Vicw. We planned a three bedroom house with garage and wash-house below. To pay for the land I sold the 1931 Model A Ford and bought a 1926 Chevrolet tourer for $90. The Chevrolet had external brakes on the back wheels only. When they became wet, one bad to be very careful, the brakes had no stopping power. There were no brakes at all on the front wheels.

To build the house I borrowed $ 600 from Connie, my sister-in-law and persuaded a Christian friend of mine to give a bank guarantee for my account for $ 600 overdraft. This meant that I could start building. We engaged Bill Lloyd at 45 cents per hour to build our home. Standard wages were less than 40 cents per hour so Bill was doing well. I became labourer and general rouseabout on the job. By the time I had nearly spent the $1,200, the frame of the house was up and there was a lot of material on the job. The Bank Manager said I could go on drawing so I ended up with an overdraft of nearly $2,500 but the house was finished. I raised a mortgage with the Norwich Union for $3,400 and paid off my sister-in-law and the bank. I had built the house for less than the amount of the mortgage raised.

Our fourth child Stephen Ross (always called Ross) was born soon after we moved to our new home in Belfast St. When I came home from the hospital to tell the children that it was a boy, Lyn said in a plaintive voice "Oh, I wanted a sister". But she soon got to love and tenderly care for her little brother. Ross was a lovely, happy child who never seemed to be in serious conflict with others,

Father came home to us by sea as soon as he could after mother's burial. When his box of goods finally arrived and was opened we discovered it had been pilfered. The Persian carpet was gone. Broken dinnerware lay about. There was hardly anything of value left. The poor man just sat with his thoughts before quietly going up to his bedroom.

Father lived in turn with us at Belfast St. and with Edwin and Joyce at St. Heliers Bay Rd. In time, he married Affra Dyson, another Open Brethren missionary. For a while they did missionary work in Fiji and then in India. I planned and organised the building of a two bedroom house for them at Manurewa- They were happy there and found companionship with members of the Manurewa Gospel Hall. Their retirement did not last long. One day Affra phoned me at the office to tell me that Father had died of a heart attack. I went out immediately but what can one do? Death is so final. He had been working in the garden earlier in the morning and came in because he felt tired, lay down on the sofa and just quietly passed away. He was sixty seven years old.