Roden, Bessie Rata née Lever, 1907-1997 (Person)
Main BodyEmployment: Rata Lever trained as a nurse at the Auckland Hospital and did her midwifery training at Queen Charlotte Hospital in London. She later nursed in Kenya and South Africa. She also worked in a branch of the RAF in Secret Service in the Sudan and Egypt. On returning to NZ she worked for seven years with a local doctor followed by several years with the Crippled Children’s Society.
Author: She wrote many newspaper articles, translated English into Braille for the blind and on her retirement her autobiography was published in 1973 Here There and Most Places.
"It is the biography of a New Zealander, a farmer’s daughter, who, through dogged persistence realised her two main ambitions – to become a nurse, and to travel to foreign places. It is an absorbing account covering backblock farming days, nursing in the slums of London, living in many parts of Africa, the World War II in Egypt and England, travel to Japan, the Orient, Iceland, Greenland, Russia and Scandinavia. Altogether Mrs Roden has made eleven trips out of New Zealand and in her story she takes us with her."
Family life overseas: Rata married RAF Flight Lt Alan Roden in Nairobi, Kenya, in 1940. Their daughter Margaret was born in South Africa in 1942 and travelled to the UK with her mother at three months old. In December 1943, Squadron Leader Alan Roden failed to return after a bombing raid on Berlin. With difficulty, as it was wartime, Rata managed to get passage for herself and her daughter on a ship to New Zealand, arriving in Auckland in December 1944 and going straight to Tauranga.
Tauranga: She lived in Tauranga for the rest of her life, she retained a taste for travel, and took many trips both in New Zealand and overseas.
See also: Lever family papers, Ams 406/5.
SourcesStrand, Gaye. (2023, May 27). Bessie Rata Roden (Lever) (1907 - 1997). Geni person record.
Purewa Cemetery Trust Board. (n.d.). RODEN, Bessie Rata.
Mrs Roden farewelled by society branch » Bay of Plenty Times, undated, see staff to view article.Visit to Far North interesting » Bay of Plenty Times, 3 March 1973.Death notices (4) » Bay of Plenty Times, 31 July 1997, p.17.
LicenseCC BY-NC 4.0
AcknowledgementTe Ao Mārama - Tauranga City Libraries Roden, Bessie Rata née Lever, 1907-1997 (Person)
SurnameLever
Also Known asRata Roden
GenderFemale
Date of Birth6 December 1907
Place of BirthTauranga, New Zealand
Date of Death30 July 1997
Place of DeathTauranga, New Zealand
Date of Burial/Cremation30 Jul 2021
Place of Burial/CremationPurewa Cemetery, Auckland
OccupationNurse
FatherLever, Henry Graham, 1870-1957
SiblingsLever, Charles Graham, 1902-1968
Lever, James Lolo, 1906-1992
Lever, Harry Rangitera Hugh, 1911-1985

Type of ContributionLibrary authority
TaxonomyStories | People





