Well-known Takapuna identity Fay Freeman has recently completed the publishing of her life story. Titled ‘Fay Freeman – Life is one long adventure’, the book was put together by local company Benefitz, using their online ‘My Life Story Book’ system.

Aged in her early 70s, Fay decided to write her life story in response to members of her family asking questions about her life and the family in general.
“While this is my life story, my motivation was to tell the story of our family as much as anything and that’s what the completed book has achieved,” says Fay. “Growing up in a family of 10 there was a lot to cover and many stories to tell. Along the way I have learnt many things about our family that I never knew. Such as my grandmother being an illegitimate child raised by her grandmother. I also discovered that my dad had a brother that we had no idea about.
“As a result of doing the book I have reconnected with relatives. Family reunions will result from these connections. Putting in all the hard work, undertaking the research that was required has been very rewarding.”
The project took Fay around 18 months from start to delivery of the books. She says the hardest part was working out where to stop.
Fay’s book is 230 pages with over 30 chapters. Around 50 copies in both hard and soft cover options have been printed and the content is also online. Being handy on the computer, Fay built the book online with close assistance from the Benefitz team.
“I had been keen to do my life story book for a while and saw that Benefitz were doing them,” adds Fay. “I was well aware of their good reputation and work in the community so was only too pleased to engage with Aidan and the team for my book. It hasn’t been totally plain sailing but I am thrilled with the end result and the assistance I have been given along the way.”
“My motivation for developing this system has been to make it easy and affordable for people to tell their life stories,” says Aidan Bennett of Benefitz. “There are so many people with great life stories to tell. There is a great deal of time and effort that goes into writing these books and organising the content and photos. Our My Life Story Book system now makes it easier to turn this content into a quality printed book and we provide the full support required to make it easy along the way. We have considerable experience as we’ve been publishing books for over 30 years.”
Benefitz prints and finishes all the My Life Story Book’s at their production facility based on the North Shore.

For more information contact Aidan Bennett,
email: aidan@benefitz.co.nz or Phone 021-500-997.