Teacher loved to support and help people
Doreen a keen writer and lover of history
DOREEN O’Sullivan was a traditional woman who also lived ahead of her time.
Mrs O’Sullivan deliberately went out of her way to touch the lives of many people.
She was a natural storyteller and a gifted writer.
One of her favourite stories was the account of her birth. Mrs O’Sullivan many times relayed the details of her breech birth on the verandah of the old family home in Gayndah on August 18, 1924.
It was a traumatic event which nearly resulted in the death of her mother.
The nurses quickly put the baby in a fruit box, christened her ‘Doreen’ as this was a popular name at the time and focussed their attention on saving her mother.
Miraculously, both mother and baby survived. She was born tiny and with a twisted foot.
This tenacity and determination to survive remained with her for her entire life.
Towards the end of her life, the unsteadiness of her feet started to cause problems. It was complications following yet another fall in May that resulted in her death on June 23, 2018 at Lourdes Home, St Vincent’s Care Services in Toowoomba.
Mrs O’Sullivan’s father, Patrick Hynes was an Irish immigrant from County Clare.
He married Sarah Taylor who was a daughter of a Burnett pioneer family.
Mr Hynes worked on telegraph lines in northern and western Queensland before he was posted to Gayndah. One of Mrs O’Sullivan’s earliest memories of her father was her sitting on his knee when he came home from work, reading for him the lesson of that day, and being helped to read the page that came next.
This interest in the printed word grew with the regular arrival of Brisbane newspaper
The Catholic Leader. Its children’s page invited letters that were printed with a reply. From the age of seven to 17, she wrote regularly.
20 years later, the newspaper’s editor Brian Doyle invited Mrs O’Sullivan to write a weekly column that was called
Woman at Home and later Doreen which lasted for 30 years. When Mrs O’Sullivan passed the scholarship examination in 1937, she attended Lourdes Hill College in Brisbane and graduated as dux of the school.
Mrs O’Sullivan won a scholarship to the Teachers’ Training College and taught in small country schools in Gayndah, Mackay and Monto.
Mrs O’Sullivan spent two years in the Good Shepherd Novitiate in Melbourne training to become a Carmelite nun but did not appear suited to the religious life.
She would marry Neil O’Sullivan in 1961 who was a teacher and a kindred spirit who shared her faith and love of history and world affairs.
The 1970s and 1980s were times of change in the catholic church and in society which is when Mrs O’Sullivan learned the need for community building.
Mrs O’Sullivan was then teaching at St Anthony’s school in Toowoomba. As a teacher, wife and mother, she respected aspects of the women’s movement but witnessed the struggle between personal success and the demands of the mystery of love.
Mrs O’Sullivan took an active part in the Cursillo movement, the International Year of the Child and the International Year of Disabled Persons.
Following this Mrs O’Sullivan became a member of the Special Religious Development community, assisting persons with intellectual disabilities and later joined the ministry of pastoral care at Baillie Henderson Hospital and the Toowoomba Hospital.
After Mr O’Sullivan retired from teaching due to ill health, the couple became foundation members of the Darling Downs Broadcasting Society, 4DDBFM, and the couple presented a weekly radio program for several years.
With the sudden death her beloved husband in 1990, Mrs O’Sullivan found an opportunity to pursue her interest in writing, beginning with the Dairying History of the Darling Downs, followed by more histories and three novels.
Early in the 1990s,
Mrs O’Sullivan visited the Benedictine Abbey at Jamberoo in New South Wales where she became a member of the Oblate Community, lay persons with a commitment to prayer, study and work.
She especially appreciated the support of Sister Hildegard Ryan who was also a Queenslander.
In 2002 Mrs O’Sullivan received a Premier’s Award for Queensland Seniors presented
by Premier Peter Beattie in recognition of her outstanding service to the community and to Queensland.
Mrs O’Sullivan is survived by her sons, Bede and Justin with their caring spouses Debrah and Iain, daughter Anne and grandchildren Liam, Morgan and Walter.
There has always been a close bond between Mrs O’Sullivan and her siblings, Mary, John and Father Jim (deceased), Kevin, Maurice, Angela and Peter. No doubt the bond was forged by the faithful care of their parents and their robust faith.
Mrs O’Sullivan’s funeral was celebrated at St Anthony’s Church, Toowoomba, on Tuesday, July 3, and she is now at peace with her beloved husband, Neil Joseph O’Sullivan, at the Drayton and Toowoomba Lawn Cemetery.
Mrs O Sullivan was small in stature but spirited with determination. Gentle and generous with the warmest of smiles, Doreen was unique and extraordinary and will be dearly missed by all who were fortunate enough to cross paths with her.