Vic Wilcox

Then during World War II, Wilcox served as a clerk in the Royal New Zealand Air Force starting May 1942.

In 1933 he formed a branch of the Friends of the Soviet Union in Waiharara and in 1934 he joined the Communist Party of New Zealand (CPNZ).

Wilcox regularly visited China and was frequently a welcome guest of leaders including Mao Zedong, Zhou Enlai and Deng Xiaoping.

[3] Wilcox continued his political activity in old age via the New Zealand China Friendship Society before dying of cancer at his home in Henderson, Auckland, on 29 April 1989.

[1] His funeral ceremony took place in a green garden in the Waitakere foothills where his brother-in-law Mark Richards (a poet) read a poem by communist Rewi Alley in tribute to Wilcox and the attendees sang "The Internationale".