Betty Mackay, an introvert by nature, with a broken childhood, without family support and without much education built a family unit with strong family values.
Published obituaries are most often about public-facing figures. Stalwarts of society. Those who live larger than life. But for every one of these, there are thousands of others who live quietly in the background, whose lives are just as important to their family, to their friends and to society. My mother was one of these.
TB was highly infectious and, at that time, was a socially shunned disease. My grandmother disowned mum, telling friends she had glandular fever and had returned to England. Mum had few visitors for the two years she spent at the sanatorium. They soon bought a house in Glenroy, but the credit crunch of the 1950s, along with dad needing hospitalisation to remove half of one lung, meant they had to sell their new home at a loss.Mark, their eldest son was born in a rented house in Marco Polo Street, Essendon. A second son Gary was born just 15 months later, dying tragically at 13 weeks. It was especially tragic because mum gave birth, and buried Gary while dad was back in hospital having half of the other lung removed.
It was a tight neighbourhood where every adult was viewed as an uncle or aunt and streets were for cricket games. At weekends, she stood cheering at the sidelines of netball and football games. Sundays she cooked casseroles, making meals from theWhen it was deemed the new suburb needed a community hall, mum and dad formed a committee and raised enough funds to build the RG Ratcliff Community Hall, named after the local mayor. Over the next decade or so, dad was president and mum secretary of the committee, continually fundraising to make improvements.
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