When Noel Holyoake joined Rotary in 1963 he had been in business in Rongotai for 10 years. Rotary clubs in that era were defined by a commercial area and classifications were important. Noel was in the oil heating and air conditioning business and his firm manufactured sheet metal piping. What it needed to develop was the ability to incorporate bends in that piping.
After being shown the door by one potential contact in Los Angeles who might have assisted, Noel attended a meeting the next day at the Wiltshire Boulevard Rotary. When he explained his predicament to a member at the club he was quickly referred to another Rotarian who had already solved the puzzle and who was delighted to make a movie of the process for Noel. By the end of his visit, that fellow Rotarian had sourced the necessary manufacturing machinery in Salt Lake City which promptly ended up in New Zealand. One good turn deserved another and Noel was able to acquire a 1930 Rolls Royce Silver Ghost in the neighbourhood which was shipped back to the club in Los Angeles which had a particular use for it. When another product which could bend was subsequently developed by Noel’s team, a Rotarian happened to be President of a sheetmetal association and it was that contact which lead to the patents for the new process being sold to that association, all made possible and achieved through Rotary connections.
While commenting about the intermix of Rotary and Business, Noel also took time to laud the achievements of the Pakuranga Rotary including the introduction of RYLA, the emergency box scheme and trees for survival. While Noel maintains he owes much to Rotary, Pakurang Rotary and community clearly owe much to Noel.