Pittwater Life June 2023 Issue

the example of his late mother, while Pam
saw it as a noble profession. John’s first of
13 appointments was to Bega High School
as an agriculture teacher in 1958, while
Pam started out in the infants department
at Wattawa Heights PS in Bankstown, where
she soon became the sports mistress.
Their relationship blossomed despite
one obstacle: religion. Pam’s Catholicism
clashed with John’s Protestant upbringing.
Fortunately, John’s father was ready with
some advice.
“Look, don’t worry about religion,” he
told John. “It doesn’t really matter. The
thing is, do you love her?”
John was sure that he did, and he and
Pam wed on 9 May 1964 at St Jerome
Catholic Church in Punchbowl.
As a newly married couple, never did
they sit at the kitchen table and resolve
to live a life defined by volunteerism
and community spirit. That happened
organically, from a blend of character and
largely unspoken guiding principles.
“I’ve loved every class I’ve taught,”
said John, who retired at the end of 1999
after 41 years in schooling, having spent
the previous eight years as principal
at Barrenjoey High School in Avalon.
“Naughty kids and good kids alike, I could
always find something I liked about them.
I’ve always been someone prepared to give
people second and third chances. All my
life I’ve felt a strong sense of justice.”
In his boyhood, John noted a form
of segregation occurring at Gilgandra’s
Western Monarch Theatre, where wealthy
people sat upstairs, poorer folk sat
downstairs, while the local Indigenous
patrons did not sit at all – they stood
downstairs in a zone just for them. The
injustice of it troubled the boy, who
couldn’t be soothed by adult assurances
that this was simply how things worked.
Pam says she learnt much from
Aboriginal children while teaching
at Stewart House in Curl Curl. “If an
Aboriginal child ran away, it was not
because they were naughty,” she says.
“The child was simply used to being out
in the bush. Although it (Curl Curl) was a
lovely place to bring them, it was different
to what they knew. That opened my eyes.
They weren’t naughty. They just felt
penned in.”
It was never the Ward way to stew on
issues while doing nothing practical. Much
better to pursue change from the inside.
Pam was the NSW Teachers Federation’s
representative on the state’s Aboriginal
Education Council from 1992-95, and then
a council vice-president for a further five
years. For all that time, John was a council
VP, too.
Play Together,
Stay Together
In 1975, two years before they moved into
their Elanora Heights home, John and Pam
became members of the Elanora Tennis
Club, of which John would later become the
honorary treasurer and then president. He
never chased power, he told me, but found
it fiendishly hard to say no when asked to
step into the breach.
Pam has been the same. In rough
chronological order, in a period spanning
the late-1960s to now, she’s served as:
examiner, Royal Life Saving Society of
Australia; committee member, Elanora
Heights Girl Guides; secretary, Chequers
Netball Club; member, St Anthony in
the Fields Catholic Church (Terrey Hills)
Continued on page 38
PHOTOS: Rob Tuckwell (x3)
Life Stories
CLOCKWISE FROM ABOVE: Pam, with Governor of NSW Margaret
Beazley, after receiving her OAM; with John at Uluru; at a Labor
function; the inseparable couple; beaming on their Wedding Day;
John after being awarded his OAM for service to the community;
meeting Prime Minister Julia Gillard; family has always come first.
The Local Voice Since 1991
JUNE 2023 37