Michael Collins Persse
Edmund Francis Keith (Tim) Denny DFC and Bar (Pe’38), who died in February 2008 and whose life we described in our September 2008 issue, was posthumously made a Member of the Order of Australia (AM) in the 2009 Australia Day Honours “for service to the essential oil industry, particularly through the development and application of steam distillation technology, and to tourism in Tasmania”. Dr Janet Elder OAM (Cl’39), who died in January, was a dedicated and selfless doctor who practised for most of her professional life in Western Australia. She was the fourth of the five children of Stanley Elder (Old School 1894) and his wife, Lucile Morlet – otherwise Elspeth (Cl’27), Katrine (Cl’30), John (M’32; GGS Council 1965-73), and Robin (FB’40) − and she grew up in the family house on land that later became part of Glamorgan. From Merton Hall she went, at 13, to Clyde where she captained the hockey and tennis teams, won the prize for best all-rounder, and was school captain. Graduating in Medicine from the University of Melbourne in 1946, she did her residency in Tasmania at the Launceston General Hospital where she was diagnosed with tuberculosis, a condition that, with relapses, blighted the next few years. Successively from 1954 in Scotland, Wales, and London she worked as a physician, was herself treated, and studied, becoming MRCP in 1958, in which year she returned to Australia to work for 20 years as senior registrar, then chest physician, and finally head of the department of Respiratory Medicine at the Perth Chest (now Sir Charles Gairdner) Hospital. She became FRCP in 1972. Later she worked as a volunteer with a palliative-care organization, caring for terminally ill patients, and gave much community service. Intensely modest and selfdeprecating, as her niece Catherine Elder said in a eulogy, Janet was deeply kind and much loved by her family and friends. Commodore Dacre Smyth AO (P’40), who died in December 2008, came to Australia, aged two, when his parents decided to emigrate with their three children from England. His father, Sir Nevill Smyth VC, KCB (a first-cousin of Lord Baden Powell, founder of the Boy Scout movement, of which Dacre became a leader in Victoria) was a British general who had commanded the 1st Australian Infantry 30
Brigade at Gallipoli, and who regarded his Australian troops as the finest with whom he had ever served – and wanted to live among them. Dacre’s mother, Evelyn Olwen Williams, was the daughter of a Welsh baronet who was Lord Lieutenant of Merionethshire. From their sheep property, Kongbool, near Balmoral, Dacre followed his brother, Osmond (P’38) (in whose memory Lady Smyth from 1953, and then Dacre himself, gave the Osmond Smyth Prize for the best all-rounder at Timbertop), through GGS, where he became a House prefect and company sergeant-major, matriculating and enlisting in September 1940, at 17, in the Royal Australian Navy. He went on to a distinguished 38-year naval career that included service in the Korean and Vietnam wars as well as in both the European and the Pacific theatres of World War Two (in which he witnessed both the D-Day landing in Normandy and the cloud over Hiroshima after the dropping of the first atom bomb). In 1978 he retired in order to paint and write, and 14 books of his (mostly thematic) paintings, illustrated by his verse and prose, followed as well as related exhibitions, work in stained glass, and much generous community service. In 1952 he married Jennifer Haggard, a granddaughter of Sir Geoffrey Syme, who in 1908 had succeeded his father, David, in control of The Age, the board of which Dacre joined in 1982 at the invitation of the managing director, Ranald Macdonald AO (M’56), a cousin of Jennifer’s. The daughter of Commander Geoffrey Haggard, who was second-in-command of the Australian submarine AE2 which passed through the Dardanelles on the original Anzac Day, and who became a prisoner of the Turks when it was sunk a week later, Jenny has written a moving biography of her father as well as an enchanting portrait of the world in which she grew up. One of Dacre’s also delightful books resulted from their pilgrimage to Gallipoli in 1990 for the 75th anniversary of the Anzac landing. The parents of four daughters and a son, they were neighbours and wonderful friends to Glamorgan. Their son, Os (P’87), spoke eloquently at his father’s funeral, held with full naval honours in a crowded St John’s, Toorak. Nigel Morgan (Bo’48), who died last July, was awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia (OAM) posthumously in the 2009 Australia Day Honours “for service to the community through support for charitable, youth, social welfare, and cultural organizations”. A son, with Lynton (M’46), of Eric Morgan, a Melbourne stockbroker, and his wife, Marian, he went from Bostock House to Stowe in England (a young school set in splendid grounds and buildings, with a strong emphasis on the arts) and Trinity College, Oxford, which he left after a time to work in South Africa as an assistant to Joost de Blank, Archbishop of Capetown, who in 1966, in England, officiated at Nigel’s marriage to Diana Manners. He brought Diana to Melbourne, where he worked as a stockbroker and took on much community service including the board of the National Gallery of Victoria Foundation (from 198891 and as chairman), the Newsboys Club (of which he was treasurer), the Melbourne
Anglican Foundation, the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award, the Johnston Collection, and St John’s, Toorak. He was a devoted mentor to his and Diana’s children, Louisa (Vass), Henrietta (Cl’88), Rollo, and Rodney (M’98). In the words of Anne Latreille (Cl’63; GGS Council 1991-2005), Nigel’s “gentle, unassuming demeanour masked a plethora of talents and interests. He was an astute businessman, a connoisseur of all things beautiful, a committed Christian, devoted to his family. Over several decades he gave generously of his time, and (often anonymously) of his money and possessions, to help causes in his home state of Victoria that were associated with young people, disadvantaged groups in society, the arts, and the church. His secure presence, and his investment skills, stood behind emerging charitable and community organizations, and long-established ones.” Norman Rachinger OAM (Ge’48), who died in October, taught at The Geelong College for 30 years, becoming deputy head of the preparatory school. For 29 years a member of the committee of management of Karingal Centre for the intellectually disabled, and president thrice, he was also president of the Noah’s Ark Toy Library and did much charitable work in the parish of Christ Church, Geelong. In 1956, in the Chapel of All Saints at Corio, he married Beth Wyndham (He’49). The Honourable Donn Casey (Cu’50), who died in January, was the only son – with a sister, Jane (Macgowan) – of Lord Casey KG, PC, CH, GCMG, DSO, MC (Governor of Bengal 1944-46, Australian Minister for External Affairs 1951-60, Governor-General of Australia 1965-69) and Lady Casey (artist, author, and aviator). After GGS, where in 1945 he was fag (a term then in use) with Rupert Murdoch (Cu’49) to Dick Cobden (Cu’45) and eventually a School prefect and one of Dick’s successors as House captain, he graduated from Melbourne University in Agricultural Science and then devoted his life to what he had decided was one of the world’s most urgent needs, population control. After working in New York and India, he settled in Cambridge where in 1963 he established the non-profit company Reproduction Research Information Service, publishing a comprehensive collection of research, the Bibliography of Reproduction. In 1966 he joined the Simon Population Trust, becoming its chairman in 1969. He developed a number of inventions, particularly the Filshie Clip. In a letter published in The Corian in 1965, he recounted news of other OGGs and added: “All these people have families of varying sizes, while I, practisiing what I preach, remain among the celibate!” In the last five years of his life, to the joy of his friends, he had the devoted companionship of Jane Grey Mansfield, a Cambridge occupational therapist, who loved and supported him through a long illness until his death. Michael Lempriere (Cu’53), who died in October 2008, was in recent years the Australian wool industry’s most influential leader internationally. Continuing a family involvement in the industry that spanned 150 years from the formation of Lempriere Bros, later Lempriere Pty Ltd, in Melbourne, he