The Rhythm of Justin Funk Monkey

Remembering the coach who guided me through my short-lived tennis career

June is motor neurone disease (MND) awareness month, and this June marks five years since my hometown lost a larger-than-life and beloved member of the community, Pete White, to this cruel and debilitating disease.

MND is an umbrella term for a group of incurable disorders that progressively damage the nerve cells that control motor functions, leading to problems with moving, talking, swallowing, and breathing. The most common sub-type of MND is amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS, though these terms are often used interchangeably.¹

Every week in Aotearoa New Zealand, about three people are diagnosed with MND and two people die from it. For unknown reasons, the rate of MND in New Zealand is above the international average. The MND Association and MND NZ have a lot of information about MND if you’d like to learn more.

That’s all I’ll say about MND because this post is about Pete. This is what I learned from him in life and the legacy that he left behind.

The Rhythm of Justin Funk Monkey

I have never been more keenly aware of my own mortality than the time I watched somebody sing at their own funeral. It was July of 2020, during those fleeting few months of zero community transmission of COVID-19 in Aotearoa, and I was sitting between my parents in a crowd of hundreds of people that lined the bleachers of our province’s sports stadium. We could have been at a Sharks basketball game, if not for the large curtain drawn across the width of the temporarily black-carpeted court, and the casket laden with flowers and a pair of drumsticks where the hoop should have been.

The man in the portrait at the center of the room, which pictured him caught between a smile and a sentence while he leaned slightly over his snare drum, was also projected on a large screen. Donned in a black leather jacket and with slicked-back hair, the 2005 version of him sang Don Henley’s New York Minute under bright stage lights. Watching him jerk his thumb over his shoulder as he sang the line “One day they’re here, next day they’re gone,” while the flower wreath and shiny pinewood blurred in my periphery had me thinking about how temporary our lifetimes of decades feel set against the millennium-sized yardstick of human history. I was already in a small pool of tears by the time he thanked the crowd and waved goodbye, and the service hadn’t even started yet. 

Pete White, a legend of my hometown. Photo supplied by Pete’s family.

I first met Pete when I was too young to form memories because he knew both of my parents; he and my Mum were colleagues at a sports store in the nineties, and his cousin is my Dad’s father figure, who gave him his first job in the industry where he built his career. My first memory of actually meeting Pete was shortly after my parents returned from a trip to the Australian Open. Dad brought home an oversized tennis ball and ranted about Rafael Nadal’s sporting prowess. Soon after their return I decided that I was going to be a tennis star and announced that I wanted to give the sport a try. It wasn’t long before I was walking onto the blue tennis courts in the stadium for my first lesson with Pete.

Pete had an endless supply of patience; I can’t recall ever seeing him show visible signs of frustration. I don’t remember exactly what I was like when I was eight, but having coached some youth sports, I know enough to confidently say that I would have gotten on my nerves very quickly and very often. He knew exactly how to make us feel like we were succeeding, even if we were having a bad day. A game of duck-shooting, in which the assistant coach would run back-and-forth across the court while we (Pete included) pelted his legs with tennis balls, was a surefire way to end any session with fun and laughter. 

I stopped playing tennis after a couple of years to focus on soccer. Even though my tennis days were not my finest sporting hours - a lowlight was the time my doubles partner and I led a match 7-0 and then lost 7-9 (we only played one set of nine games at that age) - they were formative in a way that hadn’t occurred to me until I reflected on my tennis era years later. At the time, I had an intense need to be the best at everything I did, and tennis was the one thing that I was comfortable with being average at. Upon reflection, I think that was due to Pete’s ability to make anyone he crossed paths with feel confident enough in themselves that any doubts faded into the background.

Not every community is lucky enough to have someone like Pete. His two greatest passions - tennis and music - are better off having had him dedicate so much of his time towards not only achieving his own goals, but sharing his talents with others. There is no doubt in my mind that countless young tennis players and musicians in my hometown have pursued their passions because Pete showed them that they could. Even though I chose soccer over every other sport I tried, it was Pete’s kind encouragement during my tennis years which taught me that the universe wouldn’t collapse in on itself if I failed.

MND is the reason why Pete was in the wrong part of the stadium that day in July, instead of fifty meters away coaching the sport he loved on the blue tennis courts. I haven’t said much about MND because I wanted to focus on the decades of a life well-lived rather than the disease that ended it; for example, Pete was named Southland’s Entertainer of the Year in 2000 and once played drums for AC/DC during a gig in Wollongong, Australia.

When I think about the kind of legacy that I want to leave behind, I think of Pete. I think about how he followed his passions, served his community as a member and a mentor, and brought joy everywhere he went with a personality louder than the thundering drum solos he played with his band Justin Funk Monkey. This whole life thing is short, and we could all benefit from approaching our days a bit more like the way that Pete did—by doing what we love, making the people that we care about smile, and being a role model for those who might follow in our footsteps. 

1. Some countries—like the UK, Australia, and New Zealand—use MND as the umbrella term to refer to all types of the disease, whereas the US uses ALS as the umbrella term.