Popular baker Bob Cockburn dies | Wairarapa News | Local News in Wairarapa

Master breadmaker Bob Cockburn, a   hard worker who rose
to the top in business, never stood on ceremony and had an almost
boyish lust for life, has died.

Mr Cockburn, 67, built  on his father and mother's bakery busi
ness, known as Magnet Bakery in Masterton's Queen St, to see it
flourish as Breadcraft and become part of the hugely successful Qual
ity Bakers group.

A private funeral service was held for Mr Cockburn on Sunday,
followed by his cremation. But Masterton Town Hall has been
booked for a public farewell and memorial service for him
on Saturday.

Before Sunday's service, Mr Cockburn was granted a final look at the
business he had lived for and loved.

His family and friends took his body on a last
drive around the Breadcraft plant in an old
Chevrolet Impala.

Son John Cockburn said his dad had two old
Chevs, five Cadillacs and a Bentley or two, although he pre
ferred to jump into his Lada, especially when he was on his way
to his bach at Mataikona.

Mr Cockburn became  a wealthy man but  that
fortune only came after a lot of hard work,
building on what his father and mother,
Harold and Pat, had started and which was
carried on with the help of Bob and his six
siblings.

Mr Cockburn's older brother Bruce left the
baking business to go into the ministry.  His other
brothers, John and Douglas, died in the Tangiwai train disaster on
Christmas Eve, 1953.

A turning point in the bakery's success was the purchase of an
automatic bread slicer by Mr Cockburn's father, a move that
revolutionised bread sales in the days when unwrapped barracouta
and sandwich loaves were the order of the day.

The   family business moved to bigger premises in Lincoln Rd but
soon expanded again and shifted to the existing site on the corner
of Ngaumutawa and Judds Rds in 1971. The staff   increased from
 about 14 to today's 100. 

A further milestone for Breadcraft was joining Quality
Bakers at the ground floor.

  The co-operative of bakers has been an outstanding success
and was originally formed to encompass bakeries that fell
within the old TV1 advertising parameters.

John Cockburn  says the story goes that, in deciding
what area should be included, the interested bakers turned a
coffee cup upside down on a map and drew a circle around
the lower half of the North Island and upper South Island,
thereby determining the area Quality Bakers would cover.

Bob Cockburn was at the cutting edge of the industry,
being at one time president of the New Zealand Association of
Bakers _ of which he was a life member _ and was heavily
involved with the Baking Industry Research Trust.

But it is for his strong loyalty to staff and the Wairarapa
community that  he will be best remembered. He was on first
name terms with all his staff. 

Bob  helped out many organisations and individuals but
always did so without a fanfare.
 He loved nothing better than throwing parties for  his
employees.

John Cockburn said his father's Christmas parties
``lasted about a week''.

Included would be a day set aside for the children of staff
members and a Sunday party for the Wairarapa Underwater
Club.

Diving, along with windsurfing were great loves in
Bob's  life.