The elusive Lance Bardwell resurfaces

4/10/2009

Lance Bardwell (1946-47) continually tells the Foundation office he lives in Peru.

He does this by sending his postal newsletter back with said misinformation on the envelope. Yet he is regularly seen in Dunedin and earlier this month featured in Prester John’s Talk of the Times in the Otago Daily Times.

The story about Lance goes like this …

They say that confession is good for the soul so here’s a story that former police superintendent Lance Bardwell, of Dunedin, is hoping will clear his conscience after more than 50 troubling years.

Superintendent Lance Bardwell in the late 1970s

Lance says it used to be a tradition for the police to donate a huge Christmas cake to the nurses’ home. These were no ordinary cakes either, about a metre by a metre and professionally baked and iced. Around 1956 or 1957 the cake arrived too early at the police station so was left to sit on the watch house floor for a week or so.

When it was time to deliver the cake Lance was given the job by his senior sergeant, which Lance was sure would earn him ‘‘Cop of the day’’ status from the nurses. But, to his horror, he noticed the cake was covered in fly dirt.

So he did what any bloke would do — got a damp tea towel and cleaned it off as best he could. When he finished he noticed the icing had become ‘‘off white’’ but to his ‘‘male brain’’ the cake still seemed presentable and didn’t smell, so down to the nurses’ home he went and got ‘‘more than a few’’ generous hugs and kisses after delivering the cake.

Now 77, Lance says with a laugh he’s been looking back over his life and thinking of a few stories to tell his grandchildren but decided he needed to ‘‘make peace with my conscience before I face God’’ by revealing the cake story. He offers his profuse apologies to the nurses who may have eaten the cake all those years ago and hopes none of them suffered any health problems.

‘‘As gentle as your feminine hearts can be, can you see it was the thought that was important and not the loathsome gift?’’ he says.