Pittwater Life June 2023 Issue

John and Pam Ward
never set out to
be paragons of
community-mindedness.
But through decades
of selfless service, they
became exactly that.
Story by Daniel Williams
Life Stories
The Giving Kind
The spirit of the union between John window of the Wards’ upstairs sitting Idleness played no part in their lives.
and Pam Ward was set at their first room. “All the while she could have been Why sit around gazing at a screen when
meeting, back in a simpler time. They up there dancing with all these people and you can be useful? Why seek to monetise
were student teachers, both teenagers, having fun. She won me on the spot.” every skerrick of your time and talents
and in the winter of 1957, fate had brought For her part, Pam was exactly where she when there’s a sweeter reward to be felt in
them to what is now the Broken Bay Sport wanted to be. “I thought he had the kindest contributing to the greater good?
and Recreation Centre, north of Sydney, to face I’d ever seen,” she says.
a training camp that would qualify them to How apt that an act of kindness – and Bush Values
run school-holiday playcentres for the NSW an attraction sparked by a perception of John entered the world on Valentine’s
Education Department.
kindness – lit the fuse for John Ward and Day 1939 in Gilgandra, at the foot of the
It was the evening of the big dance, Pam Coates. Until John’s recent passing Warrumbungle mountains in northwest
and all the 150-odd trainees were in high at the age of 84, the couple could reflect NSW. Home was a property called Wait-Aspirits.
Everyone, that is, except John, on a life together built on precisely that While, on which his father was a grazier
who’d sprained an ankle that day in a quality: kindness, as well as compassion, and wheat farmer. His mother, a former
gymnastic mishap and was sitting glumly generosity, fairmindedness – and a mighty dux of her school and force of nature, was
while the pretty young women kicked up work ethic.
a schoolteacher who died of cancer when
their heels.
Last Australia Day, the office of the John was four. His father remarried the
Suddenly, one of those women, Pam Governor-General recognised the Elanora following year; John would become the
Coates, was at his side.
Heights couple’s contribution to the
eldest child of six in a blended family. He
“What happened to you?” she asked. public good, awarding them both Medals was a born athlete. In everything he tried –
John related his tale of woe, and they of the Order of Australia for service
cricket, rugby, athletics – he shone.
began talking. They chatted for an hour or to the community through a range of
Pam was born in Kyogle, west of
more as the dancing and frivolity went on organisations, encompassing causes from Lismore, the daughter of a bank manager.
around them. It was all so effortless. They Scouts to world peace, Indigenous children Raised in a devout Catholic family, “I
shared a keen interest in sport – tennis, to the Olympic movement, learn-to-swim was certainly taught what was right and
especially – and they’d both grown up away classes to the Australian Labor Party. what was wrong,” she says. The bulk of
from the big smoke.
John and Pam lived in a manner that is her childhood was spent in Newcastle,
“She stayed there just talking to
an inspiration to us all. In an era marred where she played competition tennis on
me,” John recalled on a recent wintry by social media-generated self-absorption, Saturdays and swam like a mermaid at
Wednesday morning at their home, as the Wards stood tall as a couple who would Newcastle Ocean Baths on Sundays.
we took in a view of Long Reef from the sooner help others than strive to get ahead. In pursuing teaching, John was following
36 JUNE 2023
The Local Voice Since 1991