In seach of JOHN BANKS on the worldwide web

During my youth, I didn’t have the occasion to be introduced to a lot of Bankses. There just weren’t many other folks with the name, and divorce and estrangement kept us from mingling too much with Grandfather Banks and anyone else from that side of the family tree. (There is a brand new branch on that tree!)

Several years back, a cousin of my father’s did a lot of research into the Banks family history and put together a little volume filled with the generations I had never been introduced to. The book traces our family back to an Andrew Banks who came to America from England in 1635. It was a fascinating read, and I was thrilled to discover all those Banks roots.

Despite all those far-flung relations, Bankses are few and far between. No Smith or Jones, we. In fact, there are only a couple dozen Bankses listed in the Tucson phone book. One of them is Leo W. Banks, who writes regularly for local magazines and newspapers, including The Tucson Weekly. People occasionally ask if we are related, but I don’t find Leo in my family history book, and we’ve never actually met. (Leo has also written a couple of books of detective fiction I’ve enjoyed.)

There is also at least one other John Banks in Tucson, and before the disappearance of landlines, we used to get occasional calls from folks looking for him to repair their transmissions. I spoke with him on the phone once, but we’ve never met in person.

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In Memory of
John S. Banks
1930-2020

With the geneaological records the Mormon Church and others are making electronically available, I may eventually try my hand at digging into the history of the other parts of my family tree — the Pyrons, Martins and Johnsons — but in the meantime, I decided to use the tools I had at hand and simply went in search of "John Banks" on the World Wide Web.

Using the web’s most popular search engine (Google), my searches have returned several hundred references, only a few of them to my own web pages. The rest of the links have taken me on an enjoyable trip around the world to discover what other fellows named John Banks are up to. Some of them had extensive references, others were merely mentioned in passing on pages that were dedicated to something else. More than a few have shown up in obituaries!

Since first publishing the results of this search in January 1997, some of the original links have disappeared. In the interest of maintaining an up-to-date document, I have corrected bad links where possible. Dead links which could not be followed to new locations are marked with asterisks (*), though the link code has been retained in the interest of future searches. I also continue to add to the list with the results of more recent searches.

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The John Banks with the most references (and images) is a New Zealand politician. He was a member of Parliament for the National Party from 1981 to 1999, and for ACT New Zealand from 2011 to 2014. He was a Cabinet Minister from 1990 to 1996 and 2011 to 2013. In between his times in Parliament he served as Mayor of Auckland City for two terms, from 2001 to 2004, and from 2007 to 2010. When seven former smaller councils were combined into one to run the Auckland ’supercity,’ Banks ran for mayor again but was beaten by the serving mayor of Manukau City.

In June 2014 he was found guilty of filing a false electoral return after the 2010 mayoralty campaign. He resigned as a Minister when charges were brought against him in 2013, and as an MP days after being found guilty. Banks will be unable to stand for Parliament again.

Banks is reported to have stated that he believes the first chapters of the Book of Genesis, describing the creation of the world in six days, are literally true.

I think he rather looks like the late American actor Earl Holliman.

Among other, non-political John Bankses “down under”:

• John BanksJohn Banks, Ph.D., a lecturer in mathematics and statistics at La Trobe University. An earlier iteration of his bio listed his research interests as “topological dynamics generally and discrete topological dynamics in particular” as well as “iterated function schemes and fractal image compression.” He is co-author of an undergraduate-level textbook that “introduces the notion of chaos and some techniques for analysing chaotic systems and time series.”

•John BanksDr. John Banks, a senior lecturer in physiology, forest ecology, dendrochronology and dendrology in the Department of Forestry at the Australian National University. His principal research interest is in the use of dendrochronology as a tool for answering questions about Australian trees and their environment. (He seems to have disappeared from Google’s reach.)

• John Banks, a former national coordinator for forensic accounting for KPMG, an accounting firm. He was interviewed for a story on corporate fraud for the Dec. 1, 1995, edition of “The Business Report” on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s Radio National. He appears to no longer be associated with the firm.

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In England there are a few noteworthy owners of the John Banks name:

Perhaps most famously, at this point, is the John Banks who is the owner of several car dealerships across the country. During a trip to the UK in late summer 2010, we drove right by one Honda lot. We stopped and took some pictures with some cars and signs, and even went inside the building to see if we could meet the man himself. But he wasn’t there on that particular day, so I simply left a business card with the manager on duty, who seemed quite amused about the whole name thing.

John BanksAnother is an actor and member of the Wilmslow Guild Players, established in 1926 at the Wilmslow Guild, an independent adult education centre in Wilmslow, Cheshire, England. Among his early credits was an interesting show entitled “The Farndale Avenue Housing Estate Townswomen’s Guild Dramatic Society’s Production of ‘Macbeth’.” Sounds like a real knee-slapper.

John BanksThe fellow in Wilmslow is not the only actor named John Banks in England. There’s a John Banks who has more than three decades of stage, television, radio and voice work to his credit, including Dr. Who and Highlander audio book productions. He’s got a variety of audio clips on SoundCloud, including a demo reel of eight voices.

John BanksAnother English John Banks once worked for GE Information Services as a UNIX Installation consultant setting up EDI systems around Europe, Africa and the Middle East. Formerly he was a system manager for the High Energy Physics group at the University of Manchester. He was also doing some work on simulation of the electromagnetic calorimeter for the BaBar experiment at SLAC.

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Three Canadians who shared the name were also churned out at one time. One was a real estate broker for Family Realty Homes Inc. in Shelburne, Ontario. Another was manager of the Air Toxics Analysis Department at EnviroTest Laboratories of Calgary, Alberta. The third was a Vancouver lawyer who, with three friends (and using the pseudonym “Michael Slade”), wrote Cutthroat, a horror thriller of the search for a seemingly indestructible serial killer whose murders stretch back an impossible number of years.

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In the United States, the long list of John Bankses once included:

Other searches have also turned up the following John Banks (and Banks-only) links:

John S. Banks, Lodge Master, 1906Another John Banks appears as an image only, at a site about the Masonic lodge in Milan, Ill., where he was Lodge Master in 1906. Eureka Lodge #69 "received its charter from the Most Worshipful Grand Lodge of Ancient, Free, and Accepted Masons on the 4th day of October, 1849." V.E. Banks was master at the same lodge in 1924, but there's no indication if he was kin to John.

There is a John Banks listed on a memorial page for New York City police officers who died during the performance of their duties. Officer Banks, Badge #6086, of the Emergency Services Unit, died of a heart attack on April 15, 1968. (Very large page.)

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One other interesting affiliation has come to light. There is an orchid that bears the name John Banks. A query to a member of the orchid society on whose page the entry turned up elicited this response:

"I have researched the John Banks. First the genera of Zygopedalum orchids came from southern Brazil and have been hybridized for about 60 years. I was not able to find who this hybrid was named for but it was registered by Wyld Court Orchids in 1975 and is a cross between Blackii and crinitum. Crinitum is a species and Blackii is a cross of crinitum and Perronoudii. Perronoudii is a cross of intermedium and maxillare. These are cool growing orchids and this cross is fragrant."

And now, thanks to this worldwide web, more information about the John Banks who gave his name to the orchid has come to light.

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A recent search on Facebook, which is becoming the whole internet for some folks, turned up scores of John Bankses, none more interesting than a particular fellow in California who enjoys playing with his facial hair. His information says he went to Nogales High, which also grabbed my attention, but it is not the one in Arizona. The word does mean "walnuts" in Spanish, so it's not unsual that it would crop up elsewhere. But this John Banks is not likely to be confused with any of the others I've run across.

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When I started this search, the John Banks club consisted of me, my father, and that one stranger here in Tucson. The roster has now grown considerably, and now, as I venture out on highways real and virtual, I keep my eyes opened for more members.

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