Incinerators and hens key to early goal

SAPPHIRE PIN: Les McGreevy holds the Paul Harris Fellow sapphire pin he received in 2016 and wears the medal for his first award, presented in 2006. Picture by Paul Rickard

A HEALTH Camp child who became a champion canoeist, a businessman who enjoys manual labour, and an investor who would just as soon raise money for the community, Les McGreevy is all of these.

The Rotary Foundation recognised his tangible support of its ideals of international peace and goodwill with the award of a Paul Harris Fellow sapphire pin. The sapphire can be compared to the “bar” attached to a medal to indicate it has been earned twice.

Les was made a Paul Harris Fellow in 2006, the year of the 80th anniversary of the Rotary Club of Gisborne.

He was lead organiser for those anniversary celebrations, as well as for events marking the 70th anniversary in 1996 and the 90th in April, when the sapphire pin was presented.

He said he was “honoured and flattered” to receive the award, and had always enjoyed community activities.

“Working in the community has been one of the most important parts of my life,” he said.

“I’ve had so much pleasure out of it. Winston Churchill said, ‘We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give’.”

Precarious spellThat life had a precarious early spell. Born in Wellington in January 1942 and raised in Palmerston North, Les had health problems as a child and at the age of five went to the Otaki Health Camp. Instead of the usual six weeks, he had to stay 10 weeks because of the polio scare at the time.

“I’m certain the health camp did me a lot of good, because from a health point of view I never looked back,” Les said.

In adulthood he remembered what he owed the health camp system and chaired the organisation in Gisborne for nine years and was deputy chairman of the national board.

Les grew up in a Palmerston North state house and when he was in his mid-teens the family moved to a house that had a paddock with a henhouse.

The eldest of four children — he had two brothers and a sister — Les quickly learned the essentials of business. While still at school he became a small-time poultry farmer.

“I borrowed money off my father to get laying hens from a poultry farmer,” Les said.

“My father charged interest on the money and rent on the henhouse. This was good for me because I learned about the costs of running a business.

“I charged my mother for the eggs and also sold them to my parents’ friends.”

Les had more than a hundred hens, and he enjoyed raising them from day-old chicks.

He was not so good at killing the old chooks, though, and got in a poultry farmer who knew what to do. Les also had a business making incinerators.

A use for drumsHis father, Arthur McGreevy, had a link with a contracting company, which used bitumen that came in 44-gallon drums.

“When the drums were emptied they became a waste product, so I started a manufacturing business turning these empty drums into incinerators,” Les said.

“I burned out any bitumen still stuck to the drums, and on Saturday or Sunday I would borrow a small truck and deliver the drums all around Palmerston North.”

A firm believer in goal-setting, Les had aimed to have a thousand pounds in the bank and a new car by the time he was 21.

“When I started work, my wages were £14 a week,” he said.

“I wasn’t going to make enough money there, but hens and incinerators did it for me.”

Les said he did not star, academically.

“I just sneaked a pass in School Certificate and took two years to get University Entrance.”

At school, Les enjoyed swimming and canoeing. He loved white-water canoeing in the Manawatu Gorge. He tested himself by paddling from Paraparaumu to Kapiti Island, and was a junior champion at the sport.

In rugby, Les played hooker in the second 15 of Palmerston North Boys’ High School. Keen to join the work force, he left school on a Friday and started work on the Monday.

“Essentially I was a labourer for 20 to 25 years, and I loved physical work,” he said.

In 1962, Les applied for the second course of Outward Bound and was accepted. He was 20. He went back when he was 60 and has booked to go on another course in March next year, when he will be 75.

He is inspired by the Outward Bound motto, “To serve, to strive and not to yield”, and still exercises most days.

Les’s family had a link to Gisborne going back to the 1950s. Arthur and Bunnie McGreevy regularly brought their children to stay at the “prison camping ground”, Churchill Park. On those visits, Les noticed that over the road was a small contracting business called Bitumen Sprayers.

Flagship businessIn 1959, his father and others bought the business. It would eventually bring Les permanently to Gisborne and be the flagship company of his business interests.

In the early 1960s, Les worked for the Palmerston North company that had the contract to build Gisborne airport’s runway.

In July 1963 he began work in Gisborne as the assistant to the civil engineer who was project manager. But within two months of the job’s start, the engineer and company had fallen out and parted ways.

At 21 and with 18 months of experience in contracting and sealing, Les became project manager. He rated the following 12 months as possibly the best work year of his life, and he found he could handle pressure.

At the end of the job in mid-1964, he returned briefly to Palmerston North and then joined Wanganui Asphalts, where he learned contracting skills that included how to hand-spray bitumen.

He would eventually buy the company but in the meantime he had noticed a gap in the market for ready-mix concrete, and created Redicrete Concrete.

During the mid-1960s he also travelled back and forth to Gisborne to help with the Bitumen Sprayers operation.

Then late in 1968, he was asked to move to Gisborne to help build up the business. The move was supposed to be for three or four years but he and his wife Val added daughters Julie, Susan and Gillian to the mix, and the shift became permanent.

Bitumen sprayersWhen Les bought Bitumen Sprayers, it had six employees. When he sold it in 1984, more than 100 staff were working on projects throughout the district and further afield.

He bought similar companies in the Manawatu-Wanganui area, and staff numbers peaked at about 200.

“I was never bothered by debt because I was always confident I could earn enough to meet interest and capital repayments,” Les said.

“If I was not prepared to bank on myself, why should the bank. I always gave personal guarantees.”

In the 1970s, he persuaded Caltex Oil to ship bitumen into Gisborne on the tanker Erne, which proved simpler and more profitable than bringing it in by rail.

Bitumen Sprayers started the lime stabilisation of roading metal in Gisborne. If poorer-quality roading metal had to be used, adding lime to it increased the strength and water-resistance in road foundations.

A lost sealing contract was partly responsible for the move. Les needed work for his staff so he won lime stabilising contracts and first leased a stabiliser, then bought one. The following year he won back the sealing contracts.

Les created a profit-share scheme for his staff and paid for their families’ medical insurance.

He liked the smell of bitumen and the physical work of road construction but found himself increasingly confined to the office.

By the end of the 1980s he had sold both Bitumen Sprayers and his Manawatu-Wanganui companies. He focused on property development and the sharemarket.

Pizza Hut on Grey StIn 1984 he put a Pizza Hut building on a Grey Street site and then developed Treble Court between Peel Street and Bright Street.

It was the biggest private development in Gisborne of its time, and Les borrowed “several million” dollars to make it happen. It opened in September 1986, in the midst of the provincial downturn, yet it was fully tenanted within three years. Les sold it in 2002.

Les has enjoyed his part in community organisations. He became a member of the National Party — for its free enterprise policies — and the Chamber of Commerce while he was still at school.

He joined Jaycees (junior chamber of commerce) in 1960. He left 22 years later when he reached Jaycees’ upper age limit, 40.

Les is disappointed the movement has almost ceased to exist: “It was personal development through community service.”

In 1971, his year as president, the Gisborne group had 104 members and tackled 146 projects. He was project manager for creation of the Adventure Playground, and enlisted the help of other service clubs for items of play equipment. It was completed in 1973.

“We worked hard but we gained a lot of pleasure and satisfaction from it. You always get more out of these things than you put in.”

Les joined Rotary in 1979 and was president in 1995-96 and 2012-13. He has been lead organiser for fundraising cabarets, club Christmas parties and changeover functions, a mystery envelope appeal and a major upgrade of the entrance driveway to Eastwoodhill Arboretum.

Les was Comet Swimming Club president and raised money for the Olympic Pool. He was on the committee for two queen carnivals — one for the Olympic Pool and one for the War Memorial Theatre.

He was project organiser for the construction of O Waiapu, the Girl Guides centre in Valley Road that has since been sold.

Les was a Gisborne city councillor from 1984 to 1989. He served on Gisborne Harbour Board for 18 years and on the health board for five.