He was surrounded by his wh\u0101nau as well as with waiata, karakia and \u201cso, so, so much love with oceans of tears\u201d, the post said.<\/p>\n
Winitana is listed online as the managing director of iScaffold Aotearoa and the national managing director of construction business Whakamana Ltd.<\/p>\n
Hastings district councillor Henare O\u2019Keefe said he worked as a volunteer alongside Winitana, helping prisoners gain building qualifications at Hawke\u2019s Bay Regional Prison and in the post-Cyclone Gabrielle clean-up.<\/p>\n
\u201c[He was] one of our kaiwhakamana volunteers, those are volunteers that can go into any prison to see anyone at any time, and Andy loved going in there, even though he was busy with his own business,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Henare paid tribute to Winitana in the council chambers this morning, where he called Winitana an amazing man of an ilk the community cannot afford to lose as \u201cthey\u2019re the glue in any community that holds it all together\u201d.<\/p>\n
There were multiple stories of Winitana rushing through Henare\u2019s head when speaking to Hawke\u2019s Bay Today, but one that stood out was when they were helping a prisoner who was about to be released.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it\u2019s a poignant story because right there on the spot, Andy offered him a job.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd I thought \u2018that doesn\u2019t happen very often for complete strangers to come together like that\u2019,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor a gentleman inside the wire who\u2019s had a very colourful lifestyle, and for Andy to step out in faith and to reach out to him like that, I think that\u2019s an amazing story.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe was a colossus of a man in many ways, physically, but kind and humble and caring. <\/p>\n
\u201cHe was one of those people who would literally give you the shirt off their backs. I just feel for his family, his wife and his children.\u201d<\/p>\n
Henare said it was now up to the community and its leaders to keep the memory of Winitana alive.<\/p>\n
\u201cHow we do that is be good mums, be good dads, just be good, kind, caring people. That\u2019s how we keep his memory alive,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf he was standing here today, he would say, look, don\u2019t let your sun go down upon its anger, put it right before the sun goes down. That\u2019ll be Andy. They didn\u2019t call him Handy Andy for nothing.\u201d<\/p>\n
Jack Riddell is a multimedia journalist with Hawke\u2019s Bay Today and has worked in radio and media in the UK, Germany, and New Zealand.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"He was surrounded by his wh\u0101nau as well as with waiata, karakia and \u201cso, so, so much love…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":266260,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[74,49816,18214,806,17704,1561,1558,3246,151736,1259,6179,1976,5158,3607,111,43,139,2551,99386,69,14727,15120,13737,151737,1337,151735],"class_list":["post-266259","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-after","tag-amazing","tag-andy","tag-as","tag-assault","tag-bay","tag-been","tag-both","tag-colossus","tag-community","tag-died","tag-hawkes","tag-man","tag-napier","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-night","tag-nightclub","tag-nz","tag-outside","tag-remembered","tag-spirit","tag-stature","tag-victim","tag-winitana"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/266259","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=266259"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/266259\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/266260"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=266259"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=266259"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=266259"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}