Alf mar: 14 Feb 1947 at Waimate to Margaret Bessie (Betty) Jacobs (b: 01 Feb 1922 in Waimate to parents Samuel Henry George JACOBS and mother Eliza Ann ATTWILL; d: 13 Apr 1996 in Stoke, Nelson; bur: 16 Apr 1996 Crem. Motueka)

Alf's sisters Mary and Rose: Their farewell tribute to their brother:

Big brother, father - uncle - tall, blonde, blue-eyed, handsome.

Alf was born in Waimate in 1923, the eldest child and only living son of Queenie and Dick Pelvin. He had four adoring - and adored - sisters.

We grew up in what would now be known as a pioneer cottage on the outskirts of Waimate - a very happy household with love and laughter, music and mandolins, and singing. We remember the telegraph boy on his bicycle with his telegram bag over his shoulder. His bedroom had drawers of 'boys' stuff which girls were never allowed to touch. His home made crystal set and a morse key which he had made himself were included. Recall the tap - tap - tapping as he practised for hours and remember his uncanny ability to remember long strings of numbers.

Mary - School days at Waimate

Rose leaving home for work

The Post Office in Waimate was a brick building and the telephone exchange was directly underneath a clock tower. Alf was on duty the night an earthquake came that shook the whole tower. He stayed at his post underneath that clock, not knowing if at any moment the whole building would collapse.

The war came and Alf was at Burnham Military Camp. He followed the family tradition of service to King and Country - our father served at Galilpoll and in France and his grandfather had served in the British Army, first escorting convicts to Australia and then in the Sikh wars in India before emigrating to New Zealand and settling in Timaru.
It must have been a very hard call for the young soldier to have to break the news to his younger sisters that their father had died aged just 47 years old in 1942 . Alf now became the man of the family. These were very difficult times for the young widow with her children, far from her own family in England.

Alf went to Canada and trained as a wireless operator at the Calgary Wireless School.

Our days were brightened when mail arrived. He wrote descriptively of Canada - Banff, Lake Louise, the Calgary Stampede. Souvenir gifts for each of us -one, a handkerchief of a bucking bronco - airforce wings and a maple leaf which was treasured and Alf borrowed it back for an Air Force Reunion at Hamilton years later.
The day war ended -  Alf was on his final furlough and was only 3 weeks away from being called in to active service where all the young airmen were being called up to fight in the Battle of Britain. We were to learn much later of his experience at his posting in England. On the interviewing panel was an officer from Waimate. This man had known Alf all his life - had dandled him on his knee  as a baby. He said quite simply, "This boy is needed at home," and posted him to Cornwall, probably the safest place in Britain at that time. There he was gloriously happy - as happy as one could be in wartime when Britain was being bombarded. However war ended and the young pilot officer was shipped home, only to be kept waiting off shore at Lyttelton for three days because of a  wharfies strike. A bitter blow for all those young men.