Mary Garden shares how her family learned their Mum had another son and the tragedy that followed. Photo / Paula Brennan
Mary Garden shares how her family learned their Mum had another son and the tragedy that followed. Photo / Paula Brennan
Two months after her mum died, Mary Garden and her siblings discovered they had another brother, former league star Mike McClennan - who would later meet a tragic fate after sparking a major police search when he went missing from his rest home. In this edited extract from Garden’s new book My Father’s Suitcase, she tells how her mother had lived and died with her secret.
A second cousin rang to tell me that before she met Dad, Mum had given birth to a son and placed him for adoption. The news was a bombshell. I burst into tears. I don’t recall much about the conversation, except that she said something about Michael being very well known in New Zealand as he’d been a famous footballer.
It didn’t make sense. How could Mum not have told me? I’d shared so much about my personal life with her. I was a mother too, and she knew I’d had two abortions.
I was the first of us three siblings (I have a younger sister, Anna, and an older brother, Robert) to talk to Michael. Although still reeling with shock, I rang him the next day, even though it was New Year’s Day. It was a very long phone call, maybe a few hours long, although I spoke mostly to his wife, Martha*. I was very emotional and often wept.
Over the next few days, there was a flurry of emails from another second cousin called Rhonda* (who seemed to know much of the history) and from Martha. Bits of the puzzle began to fall into place, although a few pieces remain unclear.
Although Michael waited until after Mum died to contact us, Martha first made contact with Mum 17 years earlier.
In 1996, Martha began searching for Michael’s birth mother and got in touch with the Salvation Army Family Tracing Service, who were able to provide Mum’s maiden name: Lovell. I’m not sure now how Martha found out Mum’s married name, but she then managed to track down Mum and Dad’s address, perhaps from electoral rolls. Presumably, she found their phone number by looking up the White Pages residential phone directory. She then rang Mum out of the blue. Such a direct approach was against the advice of the Salvation Army, who’d recommended that its organisation initiate contact.
Not surprisingly, Mum was mortified. She was not friendly at all. Mum’s anger was usually held inside but I can imagine her high-pitched, nervous voice saying she did not want to meet Michael, or talk to him. She told Martha not to ring again and that she’d contact her in future. She begged Martha not to tell us children. She was worried about what we would think of her. Martha agreed to keep it a secret from us.
I can’t imagine how distressing Mum’s reaction and rejection was for Michael, he’d have been utterly devastated. But it was clear Mum had tried to forget all about him. Shut the door on that past. Suddenly he re-entered her life, at a time when Dad wasn’t well. To have this secret dug up unexpectedly, when she was barely coping with Dad, would’ve been too much for her.
Michael was born in Auckland on January 26, 1944, at the Catholic Church’s St Vincent’s Home of Compassion, a place for unmarried women to have their babies. Adoption was often seen as the only option due to the stigma associated with being an unmarried parent and the lack of financial support available.
Robert, Mary and Anna Garden as children.
Between World War II and 1975, about 35% of women who became pregnant out of wedlock spent time in an institution to conceal their pregnancies, as Mum did. This invisibility continued afterwards. Case studies show mothers kept the secret, often not sharing it with friends, subsequent husbands or children. This secrecy and silence would have been hellish for the mothers. Mum would have been throttled by shame.
The number of “illegitimate” births – those outside marriage – almost doubled in New Zealand between 1939 and 1944, and the number of adoptions and abortions also increased. This rise was partly due to the influx of American servicemen.
Michael’s birth father was John Hughes Riley. John had enlisted in the American Army on February 26, 1942, when he was 34 years of age. During World War II, about 20,000 American servicemen came to Wellington. At the time, Mum was a nurse at the Hobson Street Hospital in Wellington and was one of the many women these servicemen swept off their feet.
By the time Mum discovered she was pregnant, John had already left to fight in the Pacific. She told Martha that John died in the war, and so never knew she was pregnant, but when Martha tracked down John’s family (after she first contacted Mum), she discovered it had actually been one of his brothers who was killed in the war. John had died on April 17, 1976. Sadly, his American siblings did not want to meet Michael. Another rejection.
According to Martha, the only people who knew about the pregnancy were a friend of Mum’s and Aunt Ola’s called Carlton Johnson (we knew her as Carl) and a doctor at Wellington Hospital, who was a friend of Mum’s family.
Over several years Mum rang Martha about 10 times and also sent two letters. Martha read out these letters to me. I was mortified at the contents. It was like a person I’d never known had written these letters. They were cold and nasty. Mum said that having Michael had “destroyed her life”.
Mum would ring when Michael was at work, but one day he answered the phone (Martha later told me this was something he seldom did) and Mum told him who she was. I’m now kicking myself for not asking Michael what this was like for him and what they talked about. Was she friendly?
At that time, Michael was a famous rugby league footballer who played for the New Zealand national team, and from 1990 he became a leading coach and mentor. He coached the Tongan team in the 1995 World Cup and was the technical adviser to the South African team at the 2000 World Cup. Mum loathed “footy”, as she called it, but I wonder if after hearing the news of her son she paid more attention to sports news on television.
Mike McClennan was well-known in the league community.
During those first few weeks after discovering I had another brother, I found myself crying for long periods of time. I even burst into tears when I was in public, once with a group of cycling friends before we set out on a bike ride. I’d never experienced grief like this before.
For many years, I could not understand why the news of Michael shook me up so much, but now I realise I was crying for my mother. For what she had suffered, this trauma ‒ the loss of Michael, a grief that we were all born into.
I met up with Michael a few months later. In April 2013, we arranged to spend a week in Nelson so that Margareta and Maurice, Aunt Alice and a few of my cousins could also meet him. Margareta had been flabbergasted when I’d rung to tell her about Michael. I was excited and secretly hoped Michael would be a better brother than Robert had been. Perhaps he’d show more interest in my children, become more involved, and I’d become part of his family. Michael had one child, a son called Brian, who had three children ‒ a son aged 13 and twins aged 11. When I’d told my son, Eamon, about Michael, he just said, ‘Wow! You mean I’ve got a real uncle at last?’
It was not the happy reunion I’d hoped for. In fact, it was a disaster and nothing like the reunions we see on television.
The week was challenging for me. For much of the time, I didn’t feel well. Perhaps it was not a good time as I was still in deep grief over Mum’s death and missing her terribly. As Martha did most of the talking, I ended up asking to spend some time alone with Michael. It was a very strained conversation. Michael told me he had not wanted to contact Mum and that the Salvation Army had advised them that they should both get counselling but there was no way they would have, he said, as they did not believe in that sort of stuff. I felt very rattled to hear all of this.
People have high expectations of reunions, but the experience is not always positive. Just because someone is a relative does not mean they will like each other. Although related, they are intimate strangers. Michael and I had no shared history and little in common. Like Mum, I had no interest in football. Michael was also beginning to suffer from dementia, no doubt caused in part by head injuries from football. I felt I’d lost my brother before I’d even met him.
Mary (centre) competing in the Papakura High School cross country race in 1965.
Whereas previously I’d felt sympathy for Michael, about the way he’d been rejected, now my sympathy swung towards Mum. I felt angry that Martha had rung her with no consideration of what Mum could’ve been going through. I did not share these feelings with them, but before I flew back to Australia, I told them I needed time to process things. I couldn’t help but think that if they’d taken the advice of the Salvation Army back in 1996, there may well have been a very different outcome. Perhaps if Mum had been contacted after Dad died, things could have been different. Or even if Michael had sent Mum a hand-written letter, to test the waters so to speak.
Now that both Mum and Aunt Ola had died, there was no reason for me to keep flying over to Auckland. I was back to being the black sheep of my New Zealand family, but busy and happy with work and my own family in Australia. I had a new life as a grandmother. I was also busy working on my book on my pioneer-aviator father, Sundowner of the Skies: The Story of Oscar Garden, the Forgotten Aviator.
On Wednesday, October 16, 2019, six months after Sundowner of the Skies had been published, Robert rang me from Auckland Airport to tell me Michael had gone missing. By now Michael had advanced dementia and had escaped from the rest home Milton Court, Orewa, where he’d been staying temporarily until his own home was made more secure. (Milton Court was where Mum spent her last years, and coincidentally Michael had even been staying in the same room where Mum spent her last days.) I said I wanted to go over, but Robert said not to. There were already many people looking for him and search and rescue crews were conducting searches with help from helicopters.
Michael was last seen on Hibiscus Coast Highway in the late afternoon. The police would later release CCTV footage: the grainy images showing him leaning forward slightly as he walked quickly northwards along a stretch of the Hibiscus Coast Highway near Hatfields Beach. I’d walked or driven up that road many times when visiting Mum and Aunt Ola.
The police thought it was possible he may have been given a lift in a car by someone. I did not believe that. I told Robert I had a hunch he was near Hatfields Beach. Over the next few days, I put numerous posts on social media, or commented on others’ posts, and suggested that the searchers and police look in the bush near Hatfields Beach. A journalist from the New Zealand Herald saw one of my posts and rang me. I blurted out that I couldn’t really say anything because Michael’s wife would not want me to mention that I was his half-sister. My rebuff is odd, as I’d already declared this fact on social media. I now regret not saying anything to the journalist.
On Saturday, I told Robert I still felt like flying over and joining in the search. I mentioned that that morning I’d been signing books and someone from Auckland had bought my book and said he knew about Michael being missing. It was all over the news in New Zealand.
Mike McClennan was all over the news in New Zealand when he went missing in 2019. Photo / Dean Purcell
Robert replied: ‘It’s now sounding pretty bad as there have been so many searchers and they’re finding nothing. I can imagine hundreds of old league mates and friends and people he coached, plus neighbours and relatives have been helping. I would not go.’
That afternoon I sat on my couch for hours zooming in on Google Maps to the bush area near Hatfields Beach. I just knew he was there.
His body was found in dense bush at Hatfields Beach that night. Police dogs had begun barking at a fence. The area had been searched several times. Later it was revealed that Michael had climbed the hill overlooking Hatfields Beach, scaled a fence and then went down through thick scrub and bush. He’d fallen over, most likely in the dark. He had puncture wounds from spikes from palm fronds and had broken his nose.
Neither Robert nor I attended Michael’s funeral, but Anna did. It was reported that “hundreds gathered to say their final goodbyes to the rugby league icon”. He was remembered as a good bloke, cheeky and determined. I later watched a video of the funeral. In the speeches there was mention of his birth father, John Hughes Riley, but no mention of Mum, his birth mother: Helen Varie Aroha Garden (nee Lovell).
I’d originally included a section on Michael and his adoption in a draft of Sundowner of the Skies but Martha was not happy about me writing anything about him. “Michael would like to respect his mother’s wishes and keep her secret. If you do go ahead, please use only M & M, not our full names.” I was dumbfounded. Mum was dead! I pointed out that Mum’s “secret” was no longer a secret as many members on both sides of the family knew about him and his name was already on the MyHeritage site. The section on Michael never ended up in the final version of Sundowner of the Skies, although I included his name in the family tree at the front of the book.
Michael is now dead too. I am not keeping him a secret.
