Sir Leonard Morton Wright (1906 – 22 October 1967) was a Dunedin businessman and was Mayor of Dunedin from 1950 to 1959. [1]
Dunedin is the second-largest city in the South Island of New Zealand, and the principal city of the Otago region. Its name comes from Dùn Èideann, the Scottish Gaelic name for Edinburgh, the capital of Scotland.
The Mayor of Dunedin is the head of the municipal government of Dunedin, New Zealand, and presides over the Dunedin City Council. The Mayor is directly elected, using the Single Transferable Vote (STV) system in 2007.
He was born in Australia and educated in Sydney. He married Cecily Bell in 1936.
He was a tea importer and formed his own business in 1927. He was on the Dunedin City Council for ten years, was Chairman of the Otago Development Council, and was honorary tea controller from 1941 to 1950. He was a rugby referee and sports administrator. He was appointed a Knight Bachelor in the 1957 New Year Honours. [2]
The dignity of Knight Bachelor is the basic and lowest rank of a man who has been knighted by the monarch but not as a member of one of the organised orders of chivalry; it is a part of the British honours system. Knights Bachelor are the most ancient sort of British knight, but Knights Bachelor rank below knights of chivalric orders.
The New Year Honours 1957 were appointments in many of the Commonwealth realms of Queen Elizabeth II to various orders and honours to reward and highlight good works by citizens of those countries. They were announced in supplements to the London Gazette of 28 December 1956 to celebrate the year passed and mark the beginning of 1957.
Morton died at Dunedin on 22 October 1967, and his ashes were buried at Andersons Bay Cemetery. [3]
Andersons Bay Cemetery is a major cemetery in the New Zealand city of Dunedin. It is located 4 kilometres (2.5 mi) to the southeast of the city centre, on a rocky outcrop which forms the inland part of Lawyer's Head, a promontory which juts into the Pacific Ocean. The cemetery is bounded on the western and southern sides by Chisholm Park Golf Links, and to the east by steep slopes which descend to the Tomahawk Lagoon. Despite its name, the cemetery is located in the suburb of Tahuna, which lies immediately to the south of the suburb of Andersons Bay, and almost 1 kilometre (0.62 mi) from the former bay itself, at the head of the Otago Harbour.
