My cousins and I knew Margaret only as grandma. She was the proud matriarch of the Dohertys who made us feel loved when she told people about her talented grandchildren. But there was so much more to Margaret, a gregarious woman who paid attention to people in a way that is sadly now quite old-fashioned. They loved her for it. Margaret and her twin Moya were born in Meadowbank on January 27 1926 to Alice and Percy Dolan, a machinist. There were eight kids; older sister Ruby was given the job of taking care of Moya while it was Audrey’s job to look after Margaret. Audrey took this role seriously. Audrey says that even as a child, Margaret always had so many friends. She listened to people, she asked them about themselves and she was great fun. Grandma was a strong and fit young woman who loved tennis and swimming. She did not like missing out on anything, and that is something the other women in the family have inherited. She was adventurous. She was 19 when she enlisted in the Royal Australian Navy on April 30, 1945. Almost a million Australian men served in World War II, but grandma was one of just 3000 women in the newly-formed women’s branch of the navy. She was rightly proud of what was then a very bold decision to join up, and one that went against some of the dominant thinking about what was an appropriate job for a beautiful young woman. She would sometimes joke to us about her time in the navy, saying “It was “yes sir” all day and “no sir” all night”. It was around this time that grandma met our grandfather, Ossie, and they forged an extraordinary partnership. They had four children, were married for 62 years and were best friends the whole time. She liked to tell me how he proposed to her while they were scaling fish at a barbecue. He said: “I could do this with you for the rest of my life”. They loved to travel together, and enjoyed some of their best trips when they took a caravan as far as the Kimberley after grandfather retired. Grandma entertained him with her stories on long stretches, and it was inspiring to watch them enjoying their adventures and each other’s company after so many years together. He took such good care of her, and she was so proud of him. He would get a bit embarrassed when she boasted about him. On overseas trips she would proudly tell strangers that her husband had built the Sydney Opera House, which was a slight exaggeration but a great ice-breaker. But grandma was modest about herself, and she never let on about some of the good things she had done. It is only this week that I learned she gave decades of volunteer service through the Catholic Women’s League, visiting elderly women at Lidcombe and using her own car to run errands for them and take them to social gatherings. Grandma loved doing this work. And that is no surprise. Even as she became very ill, she was thinking of others. Grandma made an impression on everybody she met. We all miss her.