John Francis Ernest Trenwith (2 July 1951 – 20 May 1998) was a New Zealand writer, humorist and academic. He was principal lecturer, Advertising, Auckland Institute of Technology.[1] He wrote two comic novels, A50 among the Angels and A50 Revs Up.
Trenwith worked as a secondary school teacher at Howick College and other schools before joining the marketing Department of the Auckland Institute of Technology. He wrote two textbooks on television and newspapers.[2] At the time of his death, he was enrolled as a PhD student at Auckland University and completed his doctoral thesis a week before he died. It was entitled The construction of a commerce degree in the new market: the Bachelor of Business at the Auckland Institute of Technology, 1990–1992.[3]
The novels, A50 among the Angels and A50 Revs Up, began as stories Trenwith wrote for National Radio in the late 1980s about the mischievous altar boy Ernest Trugood and his expatriate Irish Parish Priest, "A50" (named after his car, a grey Austin A50).[2] The main location is the Good Shepherd church and school in Telford Avenue, Balmoral. Recorded in 1990, the stories were broadcast on the Maggie Barry Show in 1991. Constant requests from listeners made the tapes among the most popular items from Replay Radio and led to the publications of the two books.[2]
In preparing his doctoral thesis, Trenwith became an expert on the history of the Auckland Institute of Technology. His "years of historical sleuthing" made him "AIT's unofficial historian" and provided the main bulk of the institution's centennial publication and for the centennial itself.[2] Trenwith "gave the institute a precious gift, our history. He gave his students his knowledge, his wisdom and his heart, and they loved him for it."[4]
^ abcdBill Moore, "Taught about humanity", Obituary for John Trenwith, Sunday Star Times, 7 June 1998, p. A9.
^Trenwith, John (1998). The construction of a commerce degree in the new market: the Bachelor of Business at the Auckland Institute of Technology, 1990-1992 (Doctoral thesis). ResearchSpace@Auckland, University of Auckland. hdl:2292/864.
^Bill Moore, "Taught about Humanity", quoting Jan Fitz-Gerald, Director of AIT marketing and communications, 1998.
