At a time of high unemployment in the late 1920s and early 1930s, several Returned Soldiers’ clubs were formed across the North Shore, including the East Coast Bays in 1933. Their formation was in part to promote local work schemes.
The first President of the East Coast Bays club was James Campbell Rennie, who was born in Auckland in 1890 and was well qualified to start the new organisation. Rennie had enlisted for the First World War in 1916, left New Zealand in the 20th Reinforcement, and served in the Machine Gun Corps on the Western Front. Wounded, he was promoted to sergeant and became an instructor. He returned to New Zealand in 1919 and set up a legal practice. An Auckland Grammar pupil from 1906, he had studied at the Auckland University College from 1908 to 1910. Rennie had an early introduction to the legal system when he was called as a witness in a 1903 court case concerning the death of Sarah Morris in Māngere.
Formerly Epsom residents, the Rennie family moved to Mairangi Bay around 1931 and bought a house called Seven Oaks in Brighton Terrace. Rennie then served two terms as the Takapuna Riding representative on the Waitemata County Council, from May 1932 to 1938. As the local representative, he was the perfect choice to lead the newly formed club.
However, he only served for one year as Club President, as in 1934 he was elected to the Auckland War Memorial Museum Council. He later became president of that council. The Rennie family continued to live in Mairangi Bay until the mid-1940s, when they returned to Epsom. Nevertheless, Rennie continued his links with Mairangi Bay, becoming the honorary solicitor for the Mairangi Bay Ratepayers’ and Householders’ Association in October 1945. He died in 1978.
Other early presidents include James Hurnall Wemyss, who was born in Doncaster, England, in 1874, served in the South African war at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth century and then joined the Wellington Regiment in the First World War. Farming in Browns Bay, he was president of the club from 1940 to 1941, and 1945 to his death on 17 December 1946. He is buried in St Mary’s Pioneer Cemetery in Torbay.
William Alexander Knowles was born in Wellington in 1877, served in the Otago Regiment in the First World War and lived in Murrays Bay. He was president from 1942 to 1944 and died in 1954.
Alexander Park was born in Aberdeenshire in 1890, served in the Wellington Regiment in the First World War and lived in Clifton Road in Browns Bay. He was president from 1944 to 1945 and died in 1970.
Hugh Kenneth McDermott was born in Cambridge in the Waikato in 1896, although his Army records claim 1893. Formerly a bank employee, he served in the Mounted Rifles in the First World War and from 1938 was the motor camp proprietor in Clyde Road, Browns Bay. He was president from 1947 to 1948 and died in 1981.
Martin (Marty) Robert Donovan was born in New Zealand in 1917 and was the first East Coast Bays Club President to have only served in the Second World War, in the Third Division of the 2nd NZEF. He was president from 1948 to 1949, 1952 to 1954 and 1958 to 1959, and died in 1974.
Previously meeting in the Progress Hall in Browns Bay (which opened 30 June 1934), the club incorporated in 1945, then purchased land in Clyde Road, and built its first clubrooms in the early 1950s. In March 1977, a new building costing $1.5 million opened on that site, and that was sold in 2017.
