My name is John Kenny and I am Judith’s first cousin. When I was 18 months old my first formal family photographs were taken. My favourite photograph is with Judith, my godmother, who sat proudly smiling behind me in a snappy dress and well-cut hair, she was stylish, confident and cosmopolitan. Even then she was a pleasure with whom to be associated. That association stretched uninterrupted until her unexpected and recent passing. It’s hard for me to miss her, because I can’t believe she’s gone. She had been there for me, for so long. Judith Mortimer • daughter of Charles and Dorris; • wife of Ernie McNab; • mother of Anne and Andrew • Grandmother to Riley, Shaun, Brendon and Emory; • Loving neighbour, constant friend to many and all who knew her, was born on the 7th of October 1934 – at the end of the Great Depression. Before her 2nd birthday, her mother Dorris, passed away in an unexpected and traumatic accident, the effects of which were softened by her loving family environment which soon closed around Charles and Judith in the Kenny family home at 90 Railway Rd Sydenham. Australia generally, Sydney specifically and the Kenny family precisely were all emerging from the horrors of the depression. It’s impossible for those of us who sit here today to imagine how all our parents and grandparents lived. The patriarch of the Kenny family, Ruby Winifred Kenny, shortly decided that their daughter’s death was not going to prejudice the life prospects and care of the grieving Charles and the infant Judith. Odd family relationships are a specialty of the Kenny family. Here in Sydenham was a complex extended family in which Judith grew up. She witnessed some strange and unusual family structures – living by cheek by jowl in a crowded house. • Nana Kenny and Judith in the front bedroom; • Charles (her father – commonly known as Percy) , my father Allan and his brother Colin in the second bedroom; • the estranged husband, William, Judith’s Granddad - in the back bedroom. Close and controlled by necessity. When I came along in the early 50’s, Judith had survived some 20 years of this bizarre family architecture. Though she lived in Sydenham, she travelled to Dulwich Hill for high school, quite a distance at the time. Immediately after school she worked for the education department, making lifelong friends, and until she married and moved to Wentworthville. My infant brain snapped in with Judith around the age of 5. She was tall, dark and head-turningly attractive. She was single. I could remember her washing her hair in the kitchen sink on a Saturday night when I was stuck with Nana and she wasn’t going out. From time to time Ernie would call before they married. He wore a naval uniform. He looked absolutely marvelous to a 5 year old boy. I was already visiting a house which was some version of the Munsters, and every now and then this blue clad epaulet wearing man would arrive to take Judith away. Ernie, as Andrew and Anne might be interested to know was not the only suitor Judith enjoyed as a young, unmarried woman. Others would come and call, but none of them were as important to her as Ernie. When he would come through the door at Railway road in his uniform, Judith’s smile would light up the whole house. It was clear to all of us who were part of her family entourage at the time that they were made for each other. My memory about Judith is constant – she would tickle me incessantly until I cried with laughter. She would correct my manners. She effortlessly dealt with her father, her uncle and her grandmother. Everything was better when Judith was involved. She had the best job in the world – she worked as an usher at the local Sydenham Picture Show. I would turn up with Nana Kenny at the end of Railway Rd – 150 meters away and there would be Cousin Judith – torch in hand, ushering me and Nana to the best seats in the house. All this changed when Judith married her Uniformed sweetheart – Ernie McNab – fresh from the Navy, who grew up some 4 houses towards the railway tracks. After a brief married period at Paddington where my parents and I would visit regularly, she moved to what was then a new frontier at Wentworthville (now Sovereign Hill). Two particular visits stand out – riding in the back of Ute, seated in a lounge chair strapped to the back in 1960 – aged 8 – zipping past market gardens. The second occasion, in 1961 - I was accorded the greatest honour of all – nursing young Anne from the hospital to the home. In 1964 Andrew arrived and we began the annual round of gatherings for various celebrations – birthdays, Easter, Christmas and other special gatherings. Judith was enormously supportive of the family. These regular interactions stretched until my 58th birthday. Pithy but short Christmas greetings – always arriving right on time – not just for myself – but for my wife Annie and our two daughters – Piper (her God-daughter) and Phoenix (who are here today). On all these occasion at first Judith was accompanied by Ernie, Andrew and Anne. My father was a rather Napoleonic entertainer, you were force fed an enormous amount of food and grog, laced with jokes and stories that were repeated annually. Judith would laugh as heartedly at these stories when I was thirty years as she did when I was six. Allan strongly needed her affirmation of his patriarchal role and she lovingly gave it. To be in a family filled room with Allan and Judith was to see a loving and supportive cousin and a slightly overbearing and didactic father, who could complete each others sentences and know exactly what each other was thinking. The Kenny family, like all others, has its secrets and mysteries. Things that happened before I was born about which I now wish to know. I could always go to Judith and ask her what happened, she would tell me in a reasoned, unemotional and fair manner. There was never complaint, or blame, because she was aware of the uncertainty, the stress at the time. Since I moved to Queensland I saw less of Judith than I wished to, but I was aware of her preferences and travels. She apparently did not like air travel but she did favour sea travel and regularly. Just after Piper was born, she arrived on a boat in Brisbane and then visited our home with the newborn Piper. Judith’s loyalty and commitment to her family was never more real and practical than when her loved ones were ill or aging. My mother Vicky, her father Charles, her stepmother Marea, my father Alan and her husband Ernie - were all the tended lovingly, constantly and an almost a daily basis by Judith. The visits were generally made by Public Transport – no mean feat by Wentworthville. The bonds that were formed in the over-crowded house in Sydenham during the Depression and WWII were strong enough to sustain the love between Alan and Judith. She was enormous consolation to me whilst I was living in Brisbane. The family connection was strongly intact 60 years later. Judith embodied the marvelous values of an Australian society which has now passed. She was constant, trustworthy, loving and family oriented. She supported her local P & C Association for East Toongabbie Public School, which she helped to form by lobbying her local politician. Judith a founding member of the Wentworthville RSL Swim Club, in which Anne and Andrew were members. She worked for a local entrepreneur whilst all the while making herself available for her husband and children. As with my parents and with perhaps yours, her home was not about Capital Gain and short term sales prospects. By the time she passed away, she had lived in the house for fifty years. Even Ernie’s passing could not prompt her to sell up and move closer to Anne and Bill and Emory in WA. She was comfortable in the home and she loved her neighbours, many of whom are here today. She knew each of their family stories, and she would recount them accurately, if you asked her. She was a constant oasis in the face of massive change within the suburban city of Sydney. The demographics, the politics, the land prices, and the various changes in her family didn’t faze her, because she had a central core of values which never changed. Her generation had survived a Depression, and a world war, and the momentous upheavals that followed in Australian society. I have a strong sense that Judith had accomplished everything she wanted to in her life. She had married well. She loved her children, she adored her Grandchildren, she had contributed to her family and to her community. When I spent time with her in Easter 2009, she radiated a sense of completion and orderliness. Judith’s was a life fully and well lived. She built a functional and caring community who watched out for each other and each other’s kids. She solved problems and built relationships – which became the fabric of caring neighbourhood and family. She found the best in everybody. Everybody to whom she was committed knew of that commitment and love and we each carry our own personal stories or her special connections with each of us. All of us are better off for having known Judith McNabb. Rest in peace!