Last Thursday night, 16 April, Betty and Peter Grant received a royal welcome and farewell from the Mercury Bay Tennis Club. The members and past members had gathered for a surprise Tennis Racket Guard of Honour for these two good friends and very active hard working tennis club members of 43 years.
Peter and Betty Grant will leave Whitianga at the close of April, to be closer to family and for Peter to live well without a driver’s licence with some emerging health issues.
When Peter and Betty Grant moved here in 1982 to make Whitianga their home, it was a natural course to join the tennis club.
”We used to holiday in Whitianga in the 70s. Then we would enter the Christmas tennis tournament so we knew about the tennis club. We were involved in tennis in Auckland and enjoyed the game“, said Peter.
One of the first things after arriving they did was to go down to the court one Thursday night.
There were four men playing on the court. Betty thought she should go home and leave me to it but I said, “No, you’re coming with me“.
Betty proved that night how good a player she was and that brought about both of them being a vital part of the tennis club. The year was 1982.
At their first AGM, Amy Lee, who had been Treasurer for forty years, had said she wanted to hand it over to Peter Grant. “I have been the treasurer ever since“, says Peter smiling.
Together they organised the Thames Valley Secondary Schools Tennis Championships in Whitianga for several years. Betty coached Junior players and organised interclub tournaments for them plus regular Ladies Day Interclub matches. Both Peter and Betty are life members of the club.
The tennis club was not the only organisation to benefit from the love and commitment Peter and Betty together had for this community.
Betty and Peter arrived to a surprise and emotional Guard of Honour, their last time at the tennis club.
They joined the Rugby Club at the same time and Peter started refereeing as they did not have referees at the time. Peter refereed rugby for The Thames Valley for 40 years. Peter managed the Thames Valley Secondary schools 1st XV in the Northern regional Tournament beating Auckland 6-0. “We met through rugby“, says Betty. “Peter played representative rugby for Auckland and I was playing tennis at Mangere. My attitude is If you can’t beat them, join them.” It worked with Peter.
There was also netball where Peter coached the first Mercury Bay Area School netball team that entered into Thames Valley competitions and they won their Open B grade division. They were also an active part of The Whitianga Gun Club and Coroglen Darts Club. Always they stayed for a long time and took part in the leadership and improvement of things. Peter was awarded Thames Valley Sports Administrator of the Year for his services to sport.
As well as working for Business One for 22 years, Betty has really enjoyed her work caring for the welfare of those in the pensioner flats in town. She is a member of the Mercury Bay Community Fund which administers the flats and has been their Treasurer for 13 years.
Those cartoons
Peter has been an outspoken voice on matters of coastal erosion and also on the use of Lyon Park in terms that the Deed of Gift from Thomas Lyon be always applied as intended.
His messages through cartoons have been legendary and over the years so many have appeared in The Informer. Many times, I have hoped they could have been in colour as Peter sketched his pithy messages in black and white.
Now we can do this with the new technology. Some of those messages are very pertinent now.
Betty and Peter will be living across the road from their daughter and son in law in Auckland. We will miss them. They will miss Whitianga and The Coromandel.
What gave them the push from Auckland so many years ago was a very small advertisement in The Auckland Herald for a “Caretaker Groundsman” at Mercury Bay Area School. Peter got that job. Harold Abrahamson came to see him and said, “When can you start?“
Betty says, “I wasn’t so sure. When I got here, I had really nothing to do and I missed Auckland where I had so much to do and I had left my good friends behind. It took me six months. I found that a lot of women feel that. I enjoyed involving women in the tennis club and it gave us all confidence. As I got involved with our children here, I realised just how much of the kids we had been missing in the city being so busy. As we involved in what they wanted to do, we found we were participating in sports together even when it was cheering from the sideline. It became a quality of life and lifestyle over the pressure to keep on succeeding.“
This June, Betty and Peter will have been married 60 years. We thank them and honour them for their service and contribution. Others will need to take up roles with the same spirit.
”This is very sad for us but if we leave it till next year, it will be too late. We have a lovely new unit and our daughter is across the road.“
Peter Comforts Betty
