EULOGY
Anthony John (Tony) Koop 2 AUGUST, 1941 - 8 JANUARY, 2022 Tony Koop served on the board and as president of Lane Cove Community Aid (now Sydney Community Services) for seven years. Tony passed away at the beginning of January. Here his wife Gabrielle pays tribute to her husband and a friend of many in Lane Cove.
T
ony was born in Coogee, the first child of Mary and John Koop and brother of Ann, Rosemary and Gerard. His childhood was spent at Rosebery and he often spoke fondly of family holidays with grandparents at Penrith. His first recollections were of the family home at Rosebery - standing on a wooden bench in the backyard watching fighter planes fly to and from Mascot Airport and of the milkman and his horse and cart. Tony’s early schooling was at St Joseph’s at Rosebery and later he attended Marcellin College, Randwick. By the time he finished high school he had been a sporting house captain, a prefect, an under officer in the cadets, and represented the school in football, cricket and athletics. Out of school, he belonged to the Police Boys Club and was a member of the Botany Harriers Athletics Club. Tony went to Teachers College in Bathurst in 1960 to train as a high school maths teacher. This was his first time living away from home and it made a deep impression on him. He loved life at college and country living. He stayed in touch with friends from teachers college and, later in life, became an active member of the alumni association. Of course, Tony’s teaching career wasn’t the start of his working life. He had a great capacity for work and this was evident while he was still a boy. At the age of 10, he was a paper boy often selling papers as people got on and off trams at the Rosebery Terminus. When he was 13, he had a Saturday 14 TVO
morning job at the Coles city store on Oxford Street and an after school job at Flemings packing shelves. Then followed a long list of part time holiday jobs ranging from working at the Coca Cola factories in Alexandria and Kingsgrove, to assembly line jobs and caddying at what is now the Australian Golf Club. Tony’s first teaching appointment was at Cabramatta High - quite a trip every day from Rosebery driving his father’s FJ Holden. At the same time he enrolled at the University of Sydney in an arts degree majoring in maths. He graduated and went on to complete a masters degree at Macquarie University in 1975 and a PhD at Ohio State University in 1980. In his third year of teaching, Tony transferred to the Correspondence School at Chippendale which was close to Sydney University and this made it much easier to attend uni at night. A move to Cleveland Street Boys High School in Surry Hills followed and he was promoted to maths master at East Hills Girls a few years later. A good school apparently despite the fact that his first headmistress had some trouble accepting the shorts and long socks he wore to work. During his 10 years as a teacher Tony married and had two children, Ann-Maree and David. He met his first wife, Jan, while they were both working at a National Fitness Camp, and they were married in May, 1965. He spent numerous school holidays as a counsellor and later, as a director of these camps.
In 1972, after 10 years high school teaching, he took up a position as a lecturer in Teacher Education at Macquarie University. For the next 28 years, Tony remained at Macquarie. He retired on his 59th birthday. He finished his academic career as Coordinator of Postgraduate Studies in the School of Education having supervised the research of over 100 postgraduate students including ten at doctoral level. His students over the years came, not only from teaching, but from a wide range of professions and he was very proud on being made an Honorary Fellow of the Australian College of Nursing in 1996 in recognition of his contribution to nursing education. In 1987, Tony and I married. He gained three step-daughters, Camille, Louise and Amy and, along with Mikki the cat, we lived in Lane Cove for 22 years. He might have retired from Macquarie but Tony never really slowed down. After a short break, he got busy and spent the next 10 years or so consulting and teaching for registered training organisations. He was also responsible for overseeing the registration and accreditation of the Kent Institute as a higher education provider and served for several years as the Chair of the Academic Board of Kent Institute. In 2003, we bought a 300 acre beef cattle farm at Tumbarumba. The 15 years we spent on the farm were among the happiest of Tony’s retirement. He soon became
