Whenever Barbara Marks’ daughter Helen takes her to a medical appointment, there’s an inevitable line of questioning the pair have become familiar with. Staff will always remark that there must be a mistake with Barbara’s year of birth, as it states 1923.
“I say, ‘That’s correct,'” tells Helen. “Then they immediately ask Mum, ‘What’s your secret?’ She always tells them, ‘Everything in moderation. If I feel like a piece of chocolate, I have one!'”
As the Weekly chats to her ahead of her 100th birthday, it’s clear Barbara’s long life has been underpinned by three things: family, faith and a love of sports.
Born on March 16, 1923, she’s this country’s oldest-surviving shot-put champion, who first broke the New Zealand shot-put record in 1940 (and held the record again in 1944 and 1945) as Barbara Lipscombe, before she married.
The birthday girl with daughter Helen, so Greg and granddaughters Emily (far left) and Alexandra.
Growing up in the Auckland suburb of Onehunga, the aspiring athlete and her two brothers, Frank and Alan, were encouraged to try all disciplines.
“My dad’s family were very sports-inclined,” recalls Barbara. “And I suppose wanting to keep their children occupied and out of mischief, they organised a group of family and friends to form the Onehunga Amateur Athletic Club.
“The first time I picked up the shot put, I didn’t even know how to stand properly to throw, but I was coordinated and it just came naturally.”
At that stage, Barbara had left school and was working in the office at the Onehunga Woollen Mills, where her father Percy was a carpenter.
After breaking the record at age 16 – throwing a distance of 9.44 metres – her photo appeared in the Auckland Star newspaper under the headline “Shot-put Queen”.
“Of course then everybody wanted to train me,” Barbara laughs. “Up until then, I’d never had a coach. My father and I just used to climb over our back fence onto a flat paddock. I’d put the shot and Dad would bowl it back to me, and tell me where I could do better.
“The shot I used was handmade too. One of my uncles was working in a foundry and so I could have my own shot to practise with. He made one for me by collecting the scrap metal from his work and melting it down.
“There were no Empire Games or Olympics held during the wartime years, so I didn’t even think about them as an ambition.”
As the elegant centenarian shows us her black-and-white photos of the Auckland Women’s Athletic team, she points out they made their own uniformed blouses and shorts to compete in.
“The female athletes were made a bit of a fuss over in some ways,” she reflects. “We were outside the norm because usually it was just the boys who did the sports.”
Barbara’s late husband Carl Marks was also an athlete – he competed in the 440 yards (400 metre) hurdles at Auckland championship level – but that’s not how the young sweethearts met.
“I was 15 the first time I saw him,” she smiles. “He was very tall, dark and handsome. My parents and his parents were friends of people who were having a wedding anniversary party. He asked me to dance.”
Barbara shared 60 wonderful years with Carl.
The couple married in 1946 and while busy raising their four children – Greg, 75, Bruce, 73, Helen, 70, and Ross 63 – and doing volunteer work, Barbara felt she no longer had the time to continue her athletic career.
But her sporting prowess was never lost on her family. In 2017, the family organised a meeting with Dame Valerie Adams for the two Kiwi shot- put champions to share their stories with each other.
“Valerie was delighted to meet Mum,” enthuses Helen. “And she probably wasn’t expecting someone so sprightly. But the two of them hit it off, chatting and laughing about the differences in their training and athletic careers.”
Dame Valerie & Barbara hit it off.
These days, Barbara still enjoys watching live sport on television and used to love going to her eldest grandson Sean Marks’ professional basketball games. Sean, 47, was the first New Zealander selected to play in the United States National Basketball Association (NBA).
She laments she isn’t out and about as much as she’d like since stopping driving one year ago.
“Mum passed her driver licence test at 98,” tells son Greg. “When we got back from the testing facility, the lady said to her, ‘Barbara, that was excellent. I wish all young people these days could drive like that.'”
Now, as she prepares for most of her 11 grandchildren and 11 great-grandchildren coming from London, America and Australia to celebrate her remarkable milestone at a special family lunch, Barbara says with a chuckle that she just has to “keep breathing”.
“I come from pretty healthy stock and have eaten home-grown and home-cooked food for most of my life,” she says. “My mother Olive and grandmother Emma were 93 when they died, and my great-aunt was 103. But I don’t know if I’m that ambitious!”
