When Roger Kenning left school at 15, his grandfather took him straight down to Baigent’s Building Supplies to kit him out with a builder’s apron.
Fifty years later, Roger is hanging up his toolbelt, with Roger Kenning Builders moving forward as RK Builders under the leadership of local builder and electrician Luuk Hermens.
During Roger’s long tenure, Baigents became Motueka ITM, a place he walked through the doors of hundreds of times. Phillip Woolf, who co-owns the Motueka and Tākaka stores, made sure Roger’s retirement did not go unmarked.
The call went out, and dozens of local tradespeople and store workers gathered in the Motueka ITM carpark last week, to share a beer, a steak sandwich and a whitebait fritter with Roger.
He reminisced with fellow tradies about the changes to health and safety over the years, laughing about how they used to make their own wooden scaffolding for each job. “But we always wanted to go home at nighttime, so we made them properly,” he says.
Woolfy chuckles about encountering Roger on the rugby field back in the 70s. “He was always offside, always pulling on my jersey,” he teases, before saying that they have spent many hours since at the bottom of Kahurangi Lighthouse diving for crayfish. He reckons Roger is highly respected and has a great rapport with customers, calling him an icon of the local building industry.
“He first stepped in the gates in 1973, in the old days of Baigent’s Building Supplies, bought his first apron, and has only recently taken it off.”
Roger reckons he is ready to hand the business over, saying he gave it everything he had. He speaks of the good people around him, who he was motivated to help and who helped him in return.
His wife Jacqueline acknowledged the gathered crowd, saying that they were like “a whole big family – so thank you very much”.
