Hoppy Hodges - a legend and a love story

Senior Constable Hapeta Watene Hodges QSM – known to all as Hoppy – left Police in 1989 but his legacy lives on. If anything, it’s growing.

Hoppy died at 2.12am on 22 February at the age of 84. Jan, his wife of 46 years, followed a few hours later.

They had met in 1970 after Jan, a hairdresser, moved to Lower Hutt from Christchurch. They raised a son and daughter, Edward and Evelyn, and were inseparable through the challenges of Police and family life and Jan’s battle with multiple sclerosis (MS).

“They were two very special people,” Edward told mourners at their funeral in Carterton last week. “Theirs was a true love story with a poignant end.”

Hoppy, a farm boy from Mohaka, Hawke’s Bay, joined New Zealand Police in 1956 and served for 33 years in Wellington and the Hutt Valley. He was awarded the Queen’s Service Medal for Public Services in the 1985 Birthday Honours.

Those services included saving an unknown number of survivors from the stricken ferry Wahine in Wellington Harbour in 1968, when Hoppy worked to the point of exhaustion to haul people out of the churning sea.

He was a royal bodyguard during the Queen’s 1966 visit. In 1971 he was awarded a Certificate of Merit for courage after arresting a man who had shot and seriously injured a fellow constable.

He joined Wellington’s Armed Offenders Squad in 1976 and was a member of the Anti Terrorist Squad – now the Special Tactics Group – from its inception.

In his early career he worked undercover. He was seconded to CIB in a 1979 homicide inquiry because of his mana among Māori and Polynesian witnesses. There was full cooperation, it was noted.

But it was on the streets of Naenae, where he was community constable from 1962 to 1968, that Hoppy’s presence was felt most. More than a decade after he moved on, Naenae locals were still calling on him for help.

“The good people of Naenae loved him and respected him,” former Senior Sergeant and Naenae boy Rob Rattenbury told the funeral. “The bad people of Naenae feared him and respected him.”

His methods could be ‘experimental’, Edward suggested at the funeral. According to legend, one intervention involved a young man found relieving himself in a shop doorway being made to clean up, using his own trousers as a mop.

In 1980 Chief Inspector P Wiseman pushed for Hoppy to receive a Royal Honour. “All the people said that he bent over backwards to help anybody in distress,” he wrote.

“He was fair, but very severe with the criminals and louts in the area and they all attribute a drop in the crime rate in that area to the actions of Constable Hodges.

“The more he did, the more the people of Naenae expected of him, and he is not the type to turn them down.”

Among Naenae’s ne’er-do-wells was young Billy Graham - the recipient of an alternative resolution, Hoppy-style, which continues to change young lives for the better.

Billy and Hoppy had many run-ins. One night Hoppy took Billy home after catching him with a load of Mallowpuffs stolen from the Griffins factory – and to save him from a beating from his father, he offered to take him to the local boxing club.

Billy went on to become a New Zealand champion and, in 2006, channelled his boxing and motivational skills into founding the Naenae Boxing Academy. There he began passing on the discipline and respect he learned in and out of the ring to a new generation of at-risk youth.

There are now six gyms nationwide affiliated to the Naenae Boxing Academy, and more to come. Around 2000 boys - and, since 2016, girls – have trained in them.

“If there wasn’t a Hoppy I hate to think where I’d be,” says Billy, one of the speakers at Hoppy and Jan’s funeral. “He was a legend, a real legend. It was exciting to see the impact one man could have.”

While it was common for police to be called pigs, with Hoppy it was always ‘Mr Hodges’.

“Boys need heroes – girls do too – but young men particularly need heroes. Hoppy was a real hero.”

Hoppy became a supportive friend, often swapping shifts so he could attend Billy’s fights. “He had a huge following in Naenae – we all looked up to him.

“I did enough silly things when I was younger but having a cop like that in your corner was just fantastic.”

Away from the job, Hoppy was a keen diver and spear fisherman, and loved rugby, boxing and cricket.

He was tremendously fit and strong, without a scrap of fat on his 1.8m, 100kg frame. He was also known for a mean home brew.

John Bowman – former Police colleague and diving buddy of Hoppy’s - remembers the time they tried to find him a pair of shorts. The only ones he could get over his leg muscles were so huge they practically reached his ankles.

John says Jan tamed Hoppy – “like a Kaimanawa horse” – from a wild and headstrong young man into a caring and devoted father and husband.

Soon after they married, Jan was struck by MS. Their continuing devotion to each other in the face of such a cruel blow moved all who knew them.

Even Chief Inspector Wiseman thought to include in his submission the fact that Hoppy pushing Jan in her wheelchair was a common sight around Petone, to the shops or for Saturday nights out at the Workingmen’s Club.

In their later years, Hoppy and Jan were a popular pair with staff and fellow residents at the Wairarapa Village retirement complex in Masterton.

At their funeral, Wairarapa Village staff and residents rubbed shoulders with former and serving Police staff, kaumatua, whānau and friends from near and as far away as Hong Kong.

Among them were Jillian Hammond and Ma Lee, staff members who accompanied Hoppy to Wellington last April for the event marking the 50^th anniversary of the Wahine tragedy. They were proud to see the welcome he received.

Later they ate fish and chips in the rain at Eastbourne, scene of Hoppy’s heroics half a century earlier. “A really proud moment,” said Jillian.

Ma recalled seeing an old photo of Hoppy in uniform in their room – and realising he was the cop who “kicked my arse” back in the day, when she was a troublesome Petone kid. It was, she said, an honour to care for them both.

“When someone great like this goes, we class them as a tōtara tree,” she said. “He turned his body into a beautiful tōtara tree, a waka, when he went out there to save others.”

Kua hinga te tōtara i te wao nui a Tane