Innate elegance and a drive to organise: Yvonne Foreman: 1938-2026

Saturday, 27 June 2026

Margaret Yvonne (Yvonne) Foreman (formerly Procuta): 1938-2026

Yvonne Foreman enjoyed a warm relationship with a trio of aspiring opera singers. She first met siblings Faamanu, Jordan and Alfred Fonoti-Fuimaono at a series of music competitions in her recently adopted home town of Te Awamutu. Some might have thought a friendship between an octogenarian and gentlemen in their 20s, of Samoan extraction, improbable. With a lifelong love of music, a keen understanding of genuine talent and decades of experience in promotion, for Yvonne it was the most natural and obvious thing in the world.

Yvonne was the brothers' liaison person for a recital she helped organise at the Highfield Country Estate where she lived. Paying close attention to the singers' needs, ensuring they felt completely at ease and quietly passing the hat, guaranteeing a useful financial contribution was made to their ongoing tertiary study, she made an immediate impression. This support would become ongoing, a personal connection 'that made you feel like family'. She was informally adopted by the Fonoti-Fuimaono men as an honorary 'grandmother'. Faamanu credits Yvonne as 'one of the reasons' that his brother Alfred has recently sung at the Royal Opera House in London.

'Welcoming, caring, quick with a joke', with a capacity to 'always make people feel seen', Yvonne was mother to five children and a grandmother to eight. In a rich, full life, she was a school teacher and a corporate public relations manager, owned and ran her own promotions company and served the community as a wedding and funeral celebrant. Her contributions to the La Leche League, in promotion of and education about breastfeeding, were of local, national and international significance, centrally important to the movement's establishment in New Zealand and beyond.

Margaret Yvonne Fox was born 11 September, 1938 in Saltcoats, Scotland, the only child of John (Jack) Dudley Fox and Margaret (Greta) Gilchrist Fox (nee Aitken). Jack was a New Zealand-born radio operator in the Merchant Navy, who would go on to work at Bletchley Park in the same capacity during World War II. Greta was a nurse.

Arriving with her parents in Auckland in 1946, Yvonne was welcomed into her father's extended family. With both Jack and Greta in full time employment, a 'latch key kid' in the terminology of the era, she became a dedicated reader. Jack's death in 1951 saw Greta assuming the role of prime breadwinner, an experience that created deep bonds between mother and daughter.

Yvonne discovered theatre and music at Ōtāhuhu College, interests which she would sustain for the balance of her life. Whilst at school she received voice coaching from the most iconic of New Zealand singing teachers, Dame Sister Mary Leo.

Attending Auckland Teachers' Training College, Yvonne enjoyed the freedom of young adulthood at a time when the country was beginning to emerge from the immediate post-war austerity. Following graduation, she taught at a variety of Auckland schools. In the late 1950s Yvonne met Viktoras (Viktor) Vaclovas Procuta, a Lithuanian born architectural student who had first arrived in New Zealand in 1949 as a refugee. As their romance progressed she became well acquainted with the Procuta family and Auckland's wider Lithuanian community.

Yvonne and Viktor were married 30 January, 1960. They would have five children: Antanas, John, Elena, Alex (Sandy) and Andrew.

The earliest days of the marriage were spent in Hamilton before a decision was taken to relocate to the USA. With Antanas six weeks old the Procutas arrived in Chicago and would thereafter shift to Madison, Wisconsin. It was a challenging time to be growing a family but Yvonne soaked up the culture of the Kennedy, Camelot era, acquiring an elegance in dress sense, cosmopolitan cooking skills and confidence in her organisational abilities. Joining La Leche League in Madison, when pregnant with John, she soon became the publicity chairperson for the local group and would qualify as a formal leader in the movement in 1963.

Two years later, with three children in tow and pregnant with Sandy, Yvonne returned to New Zealand, settling in Cambridge, where her mother Greta was already residing.

Yvonne's contribution to the New Zealand La Leche League dates from 1967. Pregnant with Andrew, she attended a Cambridge Parents' Centre antenatal class and on the strength of her American experience was invited to give a talk on breastfeeding, a demonstration that was to become the genesis of a La Leche group in the town. Yvonne led from the front, counselling mothers in person, or over the telephone, liaising directly with health professionals.

Within a year, reflecting Yvonne's drive, enthusiasm and capacity to organise, two Hamilton La Leche League groups had been established, with a core membership of around one hundred people. In a period of rapid national expansion she was at the centre, encouraging local leadership, then a complicated process of applying to the United States through the post. She would subsequently establish a Leader Accreditation Department to train and accredit leaders in New Zealand. Says her friend and La Leche League colleague Rosie Bentley, 'because of Yvonne's professional abilities, her communication skills, her mothering, her warmth and her confidence, she saw potential in others to excel and encouraged them into roles'.

In 1969, having been specifically asked by the movement's American hierarchy to take on a leadership role, Yvonne became the coordinator of New Zealand La Leche League groups. She established a formal governing board and ran the first national conference, in Hamilton. There would be later conferences in 1971, 1974 and 1977 with hundreds of mothers and babies and some fathers attending, each of which was organised by Yvonne and her volunteer base.

Yvonne helped found La Leche League publications for both mothers and Leaders. She supported the work of New Zealand lactation physiology expert Dr. Wattie Whittlestone, ensuring he was elected onto the International LLL Professional Advisory Board, the first New Zealand scientist to enjoy the position and would later lobby to have Whittlestone's Breastmilker machine used in New Zealand hospitals, a device of particular importance in the treatment of premature babies and those with cleft-palate.

Yvonne's La Leche League swansong came at the 1977 National Conference. Her work helping to establish a New Zealand Board of Consultants, specialists in breastfeeding, was a crowning achievement. However, three decades later she was to again assume a central organisational role in the establishment of the Lache Leche League Alumnae, overseeing its inaugural national conference in 2008 and thereafter producing its official magazine, Kaleidoscope. Yvonne continued as the LLLA chairperson until 2014 and remained active in the organisation until the end of her life.

Beyond La Leche League, Yvonne was involved in a wide range of groups and associations reflecting her interests in theatre, music and the fine arts, including the Awatere Club, U3A, the Decorative and Fine Arts Society, Opera Waikato and Cambridge Repertory. She was a particularly fine singer and actress, appearing in numerous Cambridge Repertory productions, treading the boards of the Cambridge Town Hall in leading parts in South Pacific, Pink Champagne, Kismet and The Mikado.

The promotional and communication skills acquired through her LLL work were to inform Yvonne's professional career in public relations. In 1977 she took a position at Trigon Plastics, editing its monthly magazine and stage managing its anniversary events, whilst attempting the difficult task of what her one-time daughter-in-law Diane Foreman calls 'making plastic film sexy'. For the firm's 20th anniversary she enlisted the services of Bob Parker to host a parody of 'This is Your Life', managing to keep the event a complete secret from senior management. Five years later a grand ballroom was transformed into an extrusion hall, with light and mirrors creating the illusion that each table was being extruded from above and high-end fashion gowns created from frozen pea packets and rubbish bags, exhibited by professional models, all to the tune of Tina Turner's 'Simply the Best'.

An extended secondment to Seattle, in between the two events, saw Yvonne mastermind the opening of Trigon's American factory. Says Diane Foreman, her work there was 'as always…a blend of music, glamour, fun and professionalism…she had an extraordinary gift for combining business and pleasure while retaining complete corporate dignity'.

Yvonne's time at Trigon had, beyond business hours, seen her develop a relationship with company founder James David Morton (Mortie) Foreman. Yvonne and Mortie were married 28 April, 1989, the groom firm of the belief that at age 88 he had found the love of his life. The happy marriage was to last just over three years.

Beyond Trigon Plastics Yvonne established her own promotional company, Six Hats, an ambitious undertaking at an age when others might have contemplated retirement. It was an utter success, seeing Yvonne again stage managing events all over the country.

The final phase of Yvonne's working life was as a marriage and funeral celebrant. With a beautiful speaking voice and innate elegance she was enormously popular, particularly among more discerning and/or sophisticated couples. Soon sensitive to the lack of coordinated services or training programmes for celebrants, in 1999 she organised the first national celebrants' conference, which saw the formation of the Celebrants' Association of New Zealand, a professional body that continues to this day.

After the passing of Mortie Foreman, Yvonne began a romantic relationship with an old friend, the noted Hamilton photographer Bill Lindberg, which was to last three decades, their respective professional lives equally complementary. Moving to Highfield Country Estate in 2016, for the last six years, following Bill's diagnosis of dementia, Yvonne proved a loving and supportive partner. She spoke movingly at Bill's 2026 funeral about the significance of finding love later in life.

In her last few weeks Yvonne had emerged from her period of mourning with a rekindled enthusiasm, spending more time with family and friends, attending concerts and happily reflecting on life with an abiding sense of appreciation of her three romantic relationships and pride in her family.

Margaret Yvonne Foreman died 29 May, 2026 in Te Awamutu. She is survived by the Procuta children Antanas, John, Elena, Sandy and Andrew, children-in-law Tara, Emma, Richard and Sharon, grandchildren Tane, Melody, Nick, Pietta, Apirana, Kane, Jack, Liam and four great-grandchildren.