Ken Hanlon pictured at his birthday party with his son and daughter-in-law, Jan and Geoff Hanlon.
Newly-minted centenarian Ken Hanlon is just about as good a plug for clean living as you could find.
The Resthaven Cambridge resident turned 100 this month, and while perhaps less nimble on his feet than in years past, his razor-sharp mind and ready humour leave many far younger folk trailing in his wake.
He puts it down to clean living, good eating “mostly vegetables”, keeping active and being a ‘calm’ sort of a person … helped along by a nightly glass of pinot gris and a daily dose of cod-liver oil.
That ‘calm’ is less evident when talking about politicians. “Nothing but straw men,” he says, delightfully unconcerned that he should probably switch to “straw people” to align with today’s requirements in terms of political correctness.
Talk of politicians segues to education. Ken sees that as one of the many failings of successive governments and reckons the ‘Tomorrow Schools’ reforms under David Lange were disastrous for New Zealand. Chat moved to how other global educational reforms of the era teased young people away from the notion of failure – he’s not keen on any of it.
“If you tell a country that its students cannot fail at anything,” Ken reckons, “the one sure thing is that the country will fail. And besides, today’s students should be learning history, geography and general knowledge in far greater depth than they are doing so now.”
Warmongers are another target. Ken trained as a WW2 pilot in New Zealand and Canada, but he doesn’t like to talk about it, save to say: “I regard war as a complete waste of time… a waste of lives”.
Sadly, however, mankind seems hell bent on waging war, he adds, suggesting that the next might come at the hands of the Russians.
Seeing how good Ken is at selling himself, and a lifestyle that included distance running, it comes as no surprise that he had a flair for marketing from a time that likely predates the term as a business staple. “I liked the idea of selling stuff.”
He was born in Napier during the Depression, and clearly remembers being in the school playground at 10.47am on February 3, 1931, when the devastating Hawke’s Bay earthquake hit.
Centenarian Ken Hanlon with birthday cards received from Britain’s King Charles 111 and his wife Camilla, and the New Zealand Governor General, Dame Cindy Kiro.
“I remember watching the school coming to pieces … concrete facades just falling to the ground.” Then came the polio epidemic, then the war – those were not easy days.
After leaving school, Ken joined the railways as a cadet, coming in as No. 2461. He asked his manager about the railways marketing programme. The reply was that they didn’t have one, but if he was worried about his future, he needed only wait until No. 2460 passed on. “I decided to get into another field.”
He joined Shell Oil where he worked for decades, completing an accounting qualification and, unsurprisingly, doing marketing. He travelled around New Zealand and did stints of varying lengths in England, the Netherlands, Australia and Singapore.
With him throughout was his late wife Jill, whom he met when she was working at Shell as a typist. They married in 1952 and raised three sons, but lost their eldest to cancer 10 years ago. The couple moved to Resthaven nine years ago, and Jill died a few months later.
Now, Ken’s days are filled with “very careful consideration of the ceiling”, watching The Chase and listening to the radio. His family fill him with pride.
There’s a secret place in his heart for the congratulatory card he received from Queen Elizabeth 11 when he and Jill marked their 60th wedding anniversary. He’s less enthusiastic about the one he received from King Charles 111, but welcomes the recognition, nonetheless.
Did he expect to make his centenary?
“Not a hope… there are so few who do it.”
Ken Hanlon pictured with three family members who couldn’t make his birthday gathering – son Michael and two grandsons, James and William.
