A legacy of love, for family and community.

“Life is precious. Taranaki has been good to us. We really want to give back to this community and to help those that are less fortunate.” –  Vicki Haylock.

A week before Vicki Haylock passed away in April 2026, she asked to meet so she could finish telling the story of her family’s fund – thoughtful and organised to the end, making sure everything was in place. It will not surprise those who knew her.

 

Vicki had been on a long dance with cancer, and she faced it with grace. There were a hundred reasons she might have kept those final days private and quiet. Instead, she chose to tell a story – her family’s story, and their deep love for this place. That she gave us that time says everything about the kind of person she was.

This is the story of the Clarke Family Fund. A gift built from love and loss, and a family’s way of making sure Taranaki feels their care for it long after they are gone.

The heart of The Clarke Family fund

At the heart of this fund are three people. Vicki’s uncle, Dr Basil Clarke, was a ship’s surgeon turned Edinburgh physician, a man of medicine and quiet purpose who dedicated his life to the health of others. Her father, Keith Clarke, was a devoted family man and accountant. He met a young woman named Valerie at the Mt Egmont Alpine Club’s Guy Fawkes Night Party, married her in 1966, and raised his daughters Vicki and Denise with steadiness and care. And Vicki herself, who was born, she said, “wanting to make a difference”.

Uncle Basil’s wish

Dr Basil Clarke had lived a full life in medicine before retiring to Taranaki in 1995. Born and raised in Hāwera, he had studied medicine at Otago University before starting his career as a GP. He then worked his way to Europe as a ship’s surgeon, before spending 35 years in Edinburgh, as a consultant physician, lecturer and researcher, specialising in diabetes at the Royal Infirmary. When he came home to New Plymouth, he didn’t stop. Dr Clarke shared his knowledge with the local diabetes team at Taranaki Base Hospital, continuing the work he had always done.

In his later years, Dr Clarke spoke of wanting to establish a trust or scholarship; something that would carry his commitment to health and community beyond his own lifetime. He never quite got there. Dr Basil Clarke died aged 84 in 2013.

When Vicki and her husband John received an inheritance after his passing, they knew what to do with part of it. By then, Vicki had become founding CEO of Taranaki Foundation, and she saw the vehicle that Uncle Basil had never found. A fund was established in his name, to make grants supporting health, wellbeing and education across Taranaki, in perpetuity.

“Uncle Basil didn’t have children of his own,” Vicki told us. “So, setting up this fund in his name was a wonderful way for his legacy to go on.”

 A family affair

When Keith Clarke passed in 2025, it felt only right to bring him in too. The fund grew to honour both men.

Then Vicki’s mother Valerie added her own quiet chapter to the story. Valerie’s passion has always been children, and a KidsCan advertisement on television brought that into sharp focus. Those small things such as shoes and raincoats, the basics that some families simply cannot afford, yet can make an enormous difference to a child’s life. That moment inspired the family to broaden the fund, shaping it into something they could all share, and renaming it the Clarke Family Fund.

What began as Uncle Basil’s unfulfilled wish grew into something belonging to them all. Vicki and John have committed to a gift of ten percent of their estate, helping to build what Vicki once described as a “nest egg”, something that will continue to grow and give back to Taranaki for generations. Their children are fully on board. “I hope it becomes an intergenerational fund,” Vicki said, “one that they are really proud of as well.”

“As a family, we have done well,” she told us simply. “This fund really is a family affair.”

 Rooted in this place

Vicki and her younger sister Denise grew up in Stratford before moving to New Plymouth during their high school years. Vicki would later spend time in Palmerston North, but the pull of home was strong. She returned to New Plymouth with John to raise their daughters, and it was here that she found purposeful work.

She joined the Taranaki Foundation in its founding years and served as its first Chief Executive. Those early years were about laying groundwork. Foundations that were not always visible at the time, but that are now being felt right across the community. “I am so proud of what the Foundation is doing,” she said. “And I am proud to be part of it.”

She understood, from the inside, what it means for a community to have a vehicle through which people can give together. “One individual can’t do as much,” she reflected. “But working together as a group of donors, we can really make things better for Taranaki.”

She loved Taranaki with the particular affection of someone who had chosen to come back. The mountain meant something deep to her. “Our Maunga has a spiritual pull,” she said. “We love Taranaki.”

 Going forward. For Taranaki, forever.

The Clarke Family Fund will make grants in perpetuity to support child and community wellbeing initiatives across Taranaki. It reflects the values of everyone whose name it carries. A doctor who gave his life to healing, a father and mother who gave their family a firm and loving foundation, and a woman and her family who have dedicated themselves to making the world a better place for those around them.

Giving through the Taranaki Foundation means the fund can be shaped around the things the Clarke family cared about most. “What I love about Taranaki Foundation,” Vicki told us, “Is that our donations can be used to reflect us and our interests. It enables a very personal way of giving.”

“It also makes us feel good to give,” John said, “and to be doing something that carries forward what Basil believed in.”

     

Pictured left: Dr Basil Clarke. Pictured right: John and Vicki Clarke.

Facing a terminal illness brought Vicki a particular clarity. “Life is precious,” she said. “Life is not going to go on forever.” And so, rather than waiting, she acted. She sat with us. She told this story. She made sure the fund was in place, that her children understood it, that her family’s love for this place would outlast all of them.

 

In loving memory of Vicki Haylock.

A community made better for having her in it.

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Image at top of page: (left to right): Denise, their mother Valarie, and Vicki, with Keith and Basil pictured in hand.