This instalment of Benalla Stories focuses on local boxing trainer, fireman, milko and boxer, Lenny Griffiths.
Hold tight - we’re checking permissions before loading more content
When the fire siren sounds in Benalla, the boxers in Lenny Griffith’s gym suspect that training is over for the day.
Lenny swaps the boxing gloves for a fire hose as he joins in to deal with whatever fire has started.
He’s an institution in Benalla as someone who has dedicated much of his life to his community.
Whether fighting fires, delivering milk at 2am, getting in the ring with champion boxers or training others in the ‘noble art’, Lenny has led an action-packed life.
According to Benalla Family Research Group, Lenny’s great aunt was Ned Kelly’s sister Grace.
While this is a fairly distant family connection, in terms of the life he has led, Lenny can, in many respects, claim to be almost as ‘game as Ned Kelly’.
The boxing ring and bushfires are not places for the faint-hearted. The same could probably be said for delivering milk in Benalla in the middle of the night.
Another link with the Kelly saga concerns Lenny’s grandmother, Bridget Reardon.
As a babe in arms, she was present as a hostage along with about 60 others at the Glenrowan Siege.
Her father was James Reardon, a railway platelayer at Glenrowan. He was forced by Kelly to tear up railway tracks.
A bullet, one of many hundreds fired at the siege, passed through the shawl in which she was wrapped and creased the top of her head.
The scar remained for her whole life, and she showed it to Lenny when she was in her 80s.
The shawl was reportedly cut into small pieces and each sold as a souvenir of the siege.
Lenny’s boxing career and personal modesty is encapsulated in accounts of two of his most significant fights.
The peak of his career came when he fought Pat Gentry, light welterweight champion of the British Army.
It was a six-round fight; Lenny won by knockout in the third round.
On the other side of the coin, he challenged Joe Rossi for his Victorian Light Welter title.
Lennie asserts that he only made one mistake in that fight.
He angered the champion by connecting with the right hand in the first round.
Rossi responded with a ferocious barrage of blows that sat Lennie down before the round had finished.
Lenny’s loss taught him something that perhaps we could all learn from.
Do not anger someone who has 400 fights and four Olympic Games behind them.
Lenny’s wife, Betty, claims that the only places he wasn’t hit were the soles of his feet.
Actually, Betty didn’t see much of either of the two of Lenny’s fights she attended.
On both occasions, she sat deliberately behind huge spectators and could see very little.
Working at Griffith’s dairy was Lenny’s main employment. Like a lot of night workers, he encountered some interesting sights in the hours of darkness,
One experience involved encountering a naked woman chasing another similarly dressed down the streets of Benalla. This was at 2am.
Out of curiosity, Lenny followed the unclad bodies with the milk cart until they entered a property at top speed.
There they joined in a brawl where two men were fighting. One of the men actually had clothes on.
Lenny took off when the group seemed to lose interest in fighting each other and began moving towards him and his cart. There was probably a very interesting backstory to this escapade.
Lenny remembers the police as being very conscientious about the milk being diluted when it rained.
They would yell at the milkos to “make sure the lids are on those milk cans”.
Lenny’s cousin Jack Griffiths was a jockey and a colourful horse trainer, who had many clashes with stewards.
But, as Lenny says, Jockey Jack knew a great deal about horses. In one episode he took a bet of £3000 that he would not be able to break in a particularly wild horse within one week.
But when the week was up the horse was completely docile, having been calmed by Jockey Jack continually hosing him down for hours and talking to him in soothing tones.
The compassionate nature of Lenny and Betty Griffiths was exhibited by their devotion to their daughter Dian.
She suffered from Hurler’s syndrome, a rare genetic disorder. Lenny and Betty took her everywhere with them in contrast to the contemporary attitudes, at the time, of keeping the disabled out of sight.
Dian lived for seven years, 10 months and one week, but with her devoted parents she led to the establishment of Ballandella, a care centre for people with disabilities in Benalla.
The fundraising for Ballandella began with a raffle organised by the fire brigade.
Approval for the raffle was gained largely by the efforts of another Benalla icon, Kevin Donnelly.
The whole town became united in fundraising, and Ballandella was the result.
The story of the Griffiths family and the fire brigade is a real family affair. Jack, Lenny’s father, Jack, and Lenny himself were captains of the Benalla Brigade.
So too was Lenny’s son Wayne, having joined at 11. His daughter Melinda was also a member.
Four generations and three captains is an impressive record.
Lenny himself has been in the fire brigade for 66 years, including 18 as captain.
Among a huge number of awards, his resume includes the CFA Honorary Life Membership and Rotary International’s highest honour, the Paul Harris Fellow.
Particular fires he recalls include the Butter Factory fire in Carrier St in the 1960s and the St Joseph’s Catholic Church fire in 1989 where firefighters were hampered by the sheer height of the building and the lack of water in the mains.
In recent times, Lenny considers the December 2025 Goomalibee fire as bad as any he has seen.
This was mainly due to lack of water in dams.
But whatever the issues and difficulties of firefighting, Lenny and his colleagues deserve great respect and admiration for their courageous response to the horrors they faced.
In an era when the word hero is bandied around to describe sports stars of all descriptions, it is individuals such as Lenny, and his fellow volunteers, confronting a fire on behalf of their communities, that really deserve such accolades.
As if Lenny’s life was not crowded enough with firefighting, boxing and work, he managed to fit in umpiring 400 games of football through the Wangaratta Umpires Board.
That must constitute what is called being a beggar for punishment.
But his whole life has been dedicated to helping his community, so why should football be an exception?
– Brian Lang.