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Bill Willmott receives ‘Gung Ho’ award

Bill Willmott having received his Gung Ho medal
Bill Willmott having received his Gung Ho medal

On Tuesday, 12 May 2015, Bill Willmott, the doyen and life member of the New Zealand China Friendship Society, was honoured by ICCIC [Gung Ho] with an award for his many contributions to projects in the spirit of Rewi Alley.

The presentation by Michael Crook, Chairman of ICCIC, took place in front of a bust of Sun Yatsen in Song Qingling‘s superbly restored garden at her mansion in Beijing.  Bill never met Song Qingling (Sun Yatsen’s wife) but he did meet Rewi in the Willmott family home in Chengdu, Sichuan, when he was only six years old.  
Forty years later, when Bill was National President of NZCFS and Rewi was in the last decade of his long life, they struck up a close friendship writing regularly.  Bill also visited Rewi every time he was in Beijing.  “Rewi invited me to join his committee that was resurrecting the ICCIC (International Committee for Chinese Industrial Cooperatives)” said Bill.
 
Several people attending the presentation also knew Rewi Alley – centenarian Isabel Crook, the China-born Canadian woman who, with her husband David Crook, helped build the New China from its founding in 1949, and her son, Michael.  Michael was assistant to Rewi Alley’s biographer Lu Wanru, who unfortunately could not attend.  Nie Guangtao (known as Lao San), one of the sons of communist general, Nie Rongzhen also attended.  Rewi Alley fostered him and his two young brothers after their adoptive father George Hogg died tragically from blood-poisoning at Shandan. (Rewi did however adopt two other Chinese orphans in Shandan.)  
The meeting was “an opportunity for these important people in the history of Gung Ho and Rewi Alley’s legacy, stretching back to the 1930s, to come together perhaps for the last time” said Dave Bromwich (National President).  A delegation of Belgian ICCIC supporters also attended.
 

DSCF0080The citation for Bill’s award reads: “Gung Ho Special Contribution Award.  Dear Bill Willmott – In celebration of the 75th anniversary of ICCIC, for your selfless dedication to the Gung Ho movement over the past years, we present this award.

Apart from sitting on their board for some years, Bill did several tasks for ICCIC “including assessing new co-operatives keen to join the Gung Ho confederation, assessing their commitment to Gung Ho values and democratic structures, in Shandong, Baoding, Shanghai, and Xiamen over several years”.

ICCIC decided that the best time to present Bill Willmott with this award was when he and wife, Diana Madgin, led the Society’s Chinese Garden Tour of 2015 .  

The press release about the award certainly went ‘viral’ – see the links below:  

 
Outside China:

Teri France