Field Hockey of Dreams
September 27, 2010
By MICHELE YOUNG
Daily News Staff Reporter
On the stage inside the Vancouver Convention Centre expansion building, Jenny John was elegantly dressed and seated on a couch between Global TV anchors Jill Krop and Steve Darling.
The 1,200 people gathered had just watched a short video presentation about John's long career in field hockey, as a player, coach, ump, administrator, volunteer and advocate for the sport.
It was a moment most people would revel in, being inducted into the BC Sports Hall of Fame.
And indeed, John was trying to soak up the feeling.
“I was called the face of field hockey,” she said with a big smile.
But in the back of her mind, that moment of glory was clouded over by
the gloom of a missing friend.
May Milling, 81, disappeared somewhere on the highway between Jasper and Kamloops at the beginning of this month.
She and John had made plans to visit.
“We go way back, to field hockey in the 1970s.”
Instead, John spent much of the time leading up to her award making posters and driving the area where Milling might have swerved off the road.
Nothing has been found. No car, no friend, no clues.
John has been involved in the search, driving the route herself and sharing information and theories with the RCMP.
So as she stepped on stage to accept her award Sept. 16, John, 69, smiled and enjoyed her accolades. But thoughts of her friend were with her, too.
“May would want this to be my moment,” she said. “May would want me to embrace this.”
The thing is, John herself had difficulty embracing the nomination. She got a call last December to inform her she was one of nine individuals being inducted to the hall of fame, along with one team — the 1994 B.C. Lions football squad.
Not only that, but it was the first time she’d been nominated. It usually takes two or three applications before someone gets in.
“So for a woman to get in, with a minor sport — this, they said, was quite remarkable.”
http://www.kamloopsnews.ca/article/...09279994/-1/KAMLOOPS01/field-hockey-of-dreams
