A few years before the Juvenolians started playing together, young Rodger Curtice would accompany his father’s club-swinging gymnastic routine on accordion, entertaining at hospitals and old people’s homes. His father’s musician friends would decamp to the Curtice house after performing. “We had a piano at home, when they finished they used to come around and party all night.”
Rodger Curtice - accordion
Bob Williams - piano
Denis Duvall - trumpet
A longtime resident of Piha, Rodger Curtice has always kept music in his heart. “I played parties at the surf club, and at the Rathole, we’d sing along up there all night. I played down the old Piha Surf Club a lot. I played with Billy T James, and twice with young David Curtis, the Studio One songwriting winner. With Billy T – at that stage I was running the [rescue] helicopter – all it cost me was a ride in the helicopter and in the jetboat and we played until four in the morning.”
In the 1970s Curtice concentrated on his horticulture career, taking on landscape architecture contracts. A co-founder of the rescue helicopter service at Piha, Rodger has saved over 3000 lives in the surf and helped to fundraise over $50 million for surf lifesaving. In April 2016, Rodger Curtice was honoured with a QSM for services to surf lifesaving.