Joining The 100 Club – Meet RSL Care’s Centenarians

Did you know that RSL Care supports about 150 centenarians, representing 1500 years of life experience? That’s a lot of stories to tell.

This year, RSL Care's Centenarian Project is sharing the stories from some of the people they're supporting who are hitting their century in 2017 – not to mention those who have already marked their 100 years. These people are using RSL Care's home care services, or live in one of RSL Care's retirement villages or residential aged care homes.

Doug Cunningham, February 23 1917.

HomeCare client, Swansea, NSW.

When Doug Cunningham was born in Leeds in 1917, the midwife said he was too sickly and unlikely to survive the night.

This year he celebrated his 100th birthday in style, surrounded, according to his wishes expressed more than 50 years earlier, by more than 100 women. His local community arranged the event after he mentioned his longtime wish in a conversation with the checkout operator at his local Coles.

“I had sat my squadron down in a hall when WWII had just started, and I said ‘I want you to talk to me about what you are going to do after the war’,” he says.

“A chap at the end of the hall asked me what I would like to do. For a moment I was stymied, but then I said I would like to live to be 100 and I would love 100 girls at the party!

“I never thought I’d make it!”

Doug was only three when his father died of Spanish Flu, and the family’s comfortable middle class existence was turned upside down. His mother, still a young woman at 26, was left to support Doug and the family with jobs first at a factory and then as a caterer at race tracks across the region.

She nurtured in her son a great admiration and respect for women, and a love of long walks and ballroom dancing – all of which have remained with him throughout his life.

Doug joined the Royal Tank Corps in 1937 and was stationed at Bovington Camp, Dorset, where his training record was not without incident.

While still under instruction he was ordered to drive a tank, despite having received no training to do so. He was managing well until he swerved to miss a convoy, crashed through the fence and wall of a country pub and finally came to a halt at the bar.

“I was under the impression that the Major was having an attack of apoplexy – he never spoke to me again from that day to now, and I felt happier than I could have thought possible,” he recalls.

When war broke out, Doug was detailed to become part of the British Expeditionary Force in France, but fate had other things in store for him.

On the day he was to proceed across the Channel, he was called to the Adjutant’s office and seconded to General Head Quarters at Aldershot for a role attached to the Command Pay Office.

Later, shortly after the evacuation of Dunkirk, he was seconded to the Intelligence Corps to handle cipher work, statistics and the treatment of raw data gathered from POWs taken during the retreat from Dunkirk. He lived a double life, moving between his London-based Intelligence role and his Aldershot base.

“The rudiments of military intelligence is that it is not a matter of individual prowess producing dramatic coups but a painstaking labour – the result of teamwork piecing together a very large number of small facts,” he says of the lessons he learned.

Doug was transferred to Northern Ireland and later worked in South Africa, India and Sierra Leone, then a British colony.

He first met his wife, Patricia, when she was assigned to work with him during the war, and he remembers asking her out – and being refused – every night for three weeks.

Eventually they became friends, and while serving overseas Doug decided it was time to settle down.

“I wrote a strong letter to Patricia stating what I was wanting out of life, and asking her if she would be interested in getting married.”

She wrote back and said she thought their partnership could work, so a wedding was planned. Doug took leave from his role in Sierra Leone for the ceremony, but suffered a bout of malaria while sailing up the English Channel.

He stoically endured the remainder of his journey to Belfast by train, postal van, ferry and taxi, determined to make Patricia his bride.

“I arrived with minutes to spare almost on my knees, shivering and perspiring, complete with a temperature that was going through the roof.”

He refused to delay the ceremony but made his apologies for the reception and returned to his lodging house to spend a week recovering, while Patricia returned to her unit.

Doug was demobbed as an acting Warrant Officer First Class in May 1946 and took jobs first as a tram conductor and then with the civil service,

In 1954 Patricia, by then a journalist with the BBC, was offered a six month assignment in Australia and the couple, now with their young son Terence, moved down under and on to a 100,000 acre property about 46 miles out of Brewarinna, in western NSW.

They stayed for 10 years then moved to Sydney, where Patricia quickly found work at the Sydney Morning Herald.

Doug also landed a position at Fairfax and quickly rose through the ranks.

He started in an accounting role and over 30 years with the company became a senior manager.

On retirement, he and Patricia lived in Leura in the Blue Mountains and then moved to Swansea. Doug is now widowed and lives at Swansea Retirement Village with support from RSL Care’s Home Care team.

At 90 he took up piano lessons at nearby Charlestown, and made a cherished friendship with a Russian friend while travelling to his teacher by bus.

He’s a well-known figure at the Swansea shops, where he takes his regular walks, and he still enjoys a dance and being part of his local church.

After a recent hospital stay, he says his Home Care support helps him stay well presented and keep on top of tasks like his laundry.

“Having RSL Care come makes a hell of a difference to me, because Kylie looks after me,” he says.

“As soon as she comes in she’s got the laundry going and is cooking me a meal.

“These days I write, and three times a day I walk to the bridge and I go into Coles and talk to people.You’ve got to live life – switch off the TV, get your trolley car out and push it down the street and ask someone to come along for the ride.”

As well as an active social life, Doug still likes a good book – his latest read? The 101 Man who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared.

Jean Le Brocq, March 11, 2017

Tantula Rise RAC, Alexandra Headlands, QLD

As a former patroness of Kawana Bowls Club, it’s fitting that Jean Le Brocq celebrated her 100th birthday with a medal from Bowls Queensland.

Jean, who lives at RSL Care's Tantula Rise community, grew up in Surat, where her family had a sheep station.

She went to school at Fairholme College, in Toowoomba, where she particularly enjoyed art. Jean remembers there was always plenty to do on the family property, where she was the second youngest of five children.

It was through her work with the CWA, knitting sweaters and socks for the soldiers during WWII, that Jean met her first husband.

“The local boys went to Singapore, and they were POWs,” she said.

She married and lived at Ashgrove, in Brisbane, where they raised two sons.

After her husband’s death, Jean met and married her second husband, and they moved to Kawana on the Sunshine Coast.

She was a keen lawn bowls player and became Patroness of the Kawana Club, continuing to play well into her 90s. She still enjoys an indoor bowls game when she has the chance.

Jean celebrated her birthday with a party at Tantula Rise.

Alf Carpenter, April 22, 1917

HomeCare, Georgetown, NSW

Alf Carpenter was in the South Pacific ocean, swimming away from a bullet-riddled barge during the Second World War when he struck up a conversation with a fellow digger who convinced him to move to Newcastle.

In April, he celebrated his 100th birthday there, where he still lives at his Georgetown home supported by our home care team.

Alf says he was floating down the Buka passage, east of Papua New Guinea, after surviving an attack on his flotilla when he met a retail worker from Wallsend.

“We started chatting and he said ‘if we ever get out of this place alive, we’ll go into business together’.”

A year later, the mate he met as they waited to be rescued sent him a telegram urging him to make the move from Wagga Wagga and help him set up a store at Warners Bay.

During the war Alf was stationed in Libya, Egypt, Damascus and Aleppo.

He fought in the Battle of Crete, Germany’s biggest airborne operation, and took a piece of metal to the head at Heraklion.

“We’d been mortar bombed and I was hit by shrapnel,” he says.

Finally, after surviving battles across the Middle East and Europe, he was sent to the Pacific towards the end of the war, where he had the mid-ocean meeting that shaped his future.

Alf credits his ongoing fitness in part to his history as a runner, decorated surf lifesaver and keen swimmer with cold-water swimmer the Merewether Mackerels.

“I swam last Sunday, but I’m in reverse thrust now – I think I’m going backwards,” he told the Newcastle Herald on the eve of his 100th birthday.

“But I used to be the zone supervisor for Surf Life Saving. I got involved in 1938, got my bronze medallion at Maroubra beach. Anything I’m interested in I tend to do pretty well at.”

In recent years, Alf lost the sight in his right eye, but regained some vision thanks to a cornea implant and proudly retains his driver’s licence.

He and his wife Marjorie raised two sons, who he has outlived. He has retained a connection with Greece since his wartime service and returned 10 times. In 2015 he was honoured by the Greek Government in a Sydney ceremony for Oxi day, which marks the refusal of Greece to grant the Italian forces wartime passage overland.

Alf celebrated his birthday at South Newcastle Leagues Club with friends, family and a schooner of his favourite Tooheys Old.

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