A Milestone for John Miles
Mairangi Bay’s weekly Thursday winter triples tournament will have an extra dimension on August 21, with a special guest of honour in club stalwart and life member, John Miles.
One of the most remarkable characters in the North Harbour centre, John will be celebrating his 100th birthday, even if that momentous milestone will have actually occurred a couple of days earlier, on August 19. But like the great club-man he has always been, John wants to involve in the occasion all those Mairangi Bay members who have been so special to him in the more than 40 years in which he has been such a club feature.
John and his gracious wife, Caryl, are providing all the catering and shouting the drinks in the celebration which will follow the tournament involving 18 teams, mostly club members, on the club’s artificial green. Fellow life members will also join John and Caryl as special guests.
John himself will have only a limited playing role in the tournament. In the last year or so, following a spell in hospital and then a fall, he isn’t quite as spry as he was.
But one of his staunchest admirers, Alan Daniels, currently Mairangi Bay’s match committee convener, says he will probably take the green for the last match or at least for a few ends.
Up until the past season, of course, John was still playing regularly and as recently as 2021 when he was 95 and Caryl was nearing her mid-80s they performed the extraordinary feat of winning Mairangi Bay’s mixed pairs.
Coming from a background in badminton, John was always a keen sportsman and as a more than useful bowler had his share of successes, mainly at club level. As much as playing he contributed immensely to Mairangi in other roles, and with his practical skills was very much involved in looking after the club’s greens.
Though she took to bowls after John, Caryl has proven to be the family’s bowling star and as an immaculate draw player has won no fewer than 18 centre titles, giving her two bars to her gold star as well as a hefty 50 club titles. In fact, Alan Daniels points out, such was her dominance at the old women’s club, there was reluctance from other members to enter and compete against her in championships.
John has no doubt that bowls, as well as good family genes, have contributed to his longevity but he also thanks the camaraderie he has always experienced at Mairangi Bay. In a 2021 interview he said the benefits he gained from bowls was in the friendship and companionship it provided and also physically and mentally from its gentle exercise.
“The Mairangi Bay club has been my second home and the people there my second family,” he says.
Besides reaching his century ,John has one other distinction. He is one of the last of that generation who saw active service in World War II. Originally from Kent in England, he was in the Royal Air Force as an air crew member and he only retired from the RAF when he migrated to New Zealand, to join an uncle, in 1967.