Station on the Rangitaiki Plains between Napier and Taupo, and transformed it into a productive farming operation with a carrying capacity of over 100,000 stock units. As a philanthropist, Stevenson supported many causes and charities, and was particularly interested in the medical area, donating to various hospitals, St. John Ambulance, and endowing chairs in orthopaedic surgery and ophthalmology and an associate professorship in plastic surgery at the University of Auckland. In the 1954 New Year Honours, Stevenson was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire for services to the community, and he was promoted to Knight Commander of the same order in the 1965 New Year Honours. He was appointed a Commander of the Order of St John in 1962, made an honorary member of the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons in 1975, and, in 1978, awarded an honorary DSc by the University of Auckland.Personal Motto of Sir William Alfred "Alf" Stevenson "DEO ADJUVANTE LABOR PROFICIT" Humble beginnings Born in 1901 in Auckland, Sir William left Albany Primary School, North Harbour at age 17 to join the drainage business of his father, William Stevenson. In 1921, the firm bought a Model-T Ford, three wheelbarrows and some picks and shovels and branched out into the construction business. Sir William took over the firm after his father fell ill and later brought in his three sons, Bill, Jack and Ross. Education might not have played a significant part in his success but practical skills and courage certainly did. Among his first contracts was the drainage tunnels into the volcanic strata of Mt Eden, Auckland and the hard clay of New Lynn, West Auckland. This involved Sir William spending hours underground using a tap drilling method. But it was on the outfalls at Devonport and Takapuna on Auckland's North Shore and at New Plymouth that another of Sir William's skills- skin-diving- came to the fore. He would go down 15ft to place gelignite under sealed rocks without the aid of a snorkel. His "wetsuit" was a pair of saddle-tweed pants and a generous coating of hammer of grease. During World War II, W Stevenson & Sons Ltd was awarded several key military contracts and after the war it won major North Island construction contracts including those for much of Auckland's Southern Motorway, the Greenlane- Penrose bypass, the Glenbrook steel mill site and the Nihotupu dam in the Waitakere Ranges. The