Memories of New England - a two-generation perspective

Abstract

My father was one of the first students to enrol at the New England University College when it opened in 1938. With the exception of his Honours year at Sydney in 1941, the Pacific War years 1942-45 and sabbaticals, he spent his entire working life there, retiring from the post of Professor of Psychology in 1978. He was the proud holder of University Union Card No. 1 until the day he died. He was dedicated to the notion of a university being a community of scholars - part of a world-wide community thereof - and dedicated to the idea that our particular community of scholars should be a fully residential one. This shaped everything he did in the course of his academic and extracurricular duties. He served as Convocation Member of the University Council from the Council's establishment in 1955 until 1971, as Council Delegate to the Sports Union, President of the Union, and President of the Rugby Football Club. He was a sometime member of the Finance Committee and the Ceremonial and Academic Dress Committee, and from 1960 until 1994 - the year before his death - he was the University's Esquire Bedell, a post with the ceremonial duties of bearing the mace and attending upon the Chancellor or Deputy Chancellor on public academic occasions, and giving advice on ceremonial procedures.