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Ryan Evans, Taranaki Daily News
Every year the National Basketball League’s best guard is awarded the Keith Carr Trophy, a trophy he made himself.

“Of course he made it himself. He did everything himself,” his daughter, Shona, remembers.

Best known in Taranaki for his feats on the basketball court and as principal of Spotswood Primary School from 1968 to 1987, Mr Carr died in New Plymouth’s Omahanui Private Hospital on Christmas Eve, aged 81, after a lengthy illness.

His family remember him as an energetic, competitive and strong-willed leader.

“Anything Dad did, he excelled in,” his eldest daughter, Denise, said yesterday.

“He came out water-skiing with us when he was 72 just to prove he could still do it.

“He was just the same (with us kids), competitive, hard-working, up at sparrow’s-fart.

“If he was up, everybody else had to be. You never sat down and rested, he was always on the go.”

Keith David Carr was born in Auckland in 1927.

He attended Palmerston North Boys’ High School where he met his wife, Dawn, while she was at Palmerston North Girls’ High School. They were married in 1949.

Mrs Carr said her husband was an excellent father to their five children, Denise, Shona, Gillian, Vivienne and John.

“Amazing, actually. He was hard-working, he could have up to five jobs on at any time,” she said.

“He built two holiday homes for the family in Turangi and Kinloch.”

Shona remembers two extended holidays around the North and South Islands as highlights of their childhood.

Mr Carr began his working career as a joiner but became a school teacher in 1964, coming to New Plymouth in 1967.

His family says he was creative and innovative as a teacher, and known as a champion of disadvantaged children.

In 1972 he won a Winston Churchill fellowship to America, where he studied open education and schooling for physically disabled children.

A talented sportsman, Mr Carr played for the New Zealand men’s basketball team from 1948 to 1956 and was in the team when it made its first ever overseas trip to Australia in 1955.

Mr Carr is survived by his wife, five children, 12 grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.