Legendary journalist Rebecca Wilson’s life was celebrated yesterday at St Andrew’s Cathedral in Sydney. Her husband John Hartigan delivered this eulogy
HELLO everyone. Can I make one point clear from the outset. My surname of Hartigan is a very old Irish name. I understand it’s derived from the Gaelic “Cry Baby” … so you have been warned, put on your seat belts!
I can hear Rebecca saying: “Suck it, Harto!”
Rebecca and I returned from our honeymoon on the romantic Greek island of Santorini a little over four years ago.
Within weeks she was diagnosed with breast cancer. In quick succession surgeons performed a mastectomy which was followed by intense chemotherapy. All this emotional torment against the backdrop of our fairytale wedding.
The surgery occurred while younger son Will sat for his HSC. This required the first subterfuge to mask the pain and distress.
And so began four years of a fight for survival. A fight Rebecca chose to keep as much as possible from friends, workmates and even family. A very public person who succeeded in maintaining her private dignity. She did so to limit their suffering. That she succeeded for so long plays to the character of a courageous and loving mother, daughter and wife.
Only once did she show any vulnerability. Rebecca, the indestructible, had just returned from another Greek odyssey to celebrate our fourth wedding anniversary.
The cancers were now rampant. In a quiet moment in our suburban lounge room, Rebecca took elder son Tom aside and said, ever so poignantly: “I’m just happy to have respondent while acquiring a further three wives. Meanwhile, the true matriarch in Maryloo – aided by her beautiful parents – set about giving the best upbringing to Rebecca, sister Liz and the young babe, Jim.
They wanted for nothing. Love by the bucketful and the best education. Rebecca and Liz at St Hilda’s on the Gold Coast and Jim at The Southport School. This was particularly important to their mum as she had been an art teacher at both schools for more than 40 years.
Rebecca excelled at school sport, particularly swimming but was an all-rounder representing Queensland in a number of interstate carnivals.
Her ultimate drive was to emulate her journalist dad. The fun, the freedom the adventure. First it was off to Queensland University followed by a Rotary scholarship to study at the University of Georgia in the American Deep South. It was a very formative time in Rebecca’s life.
She was deeply offended by the insidious racism.
But it was another phenomenon that was to play a major part in her life: A young black American footballer of legendary status, Herschel Walker. He was the running back for the University of Georgia. He and his teammates swept everything before them in the year Rebecca was a student.
He represented to Rebecca everything that was great about a black sporting hero against the social dislocation of the time. It didn’t, however, sit well with her studies. Elite sport 100 – elite studies zero!
The reality of balancing the finances of university proved too much. It was a time for her in 1990 and the birth of the boys while working part-time in sport for ABC TV.
Rebecca’s professional life then started to get really interesting if not controversial. First it was joining News Limited and the breakaway rugby league competition, Super League. Mate against mate.
Hate against hate, or so some believed.
Quickly followed by her appointment as general manager of News Limited Sydney Olympics campaign.
Everything was going swimmingly with her climb up the corporate ladder until Rupert Murdoch and his then wife decided to attend the swimming finals. Not one to dwell on detail, Rebecca had them sitting in the back row of the nosebleed seats. If this wasn’t enough, it was compounded by their transport home not turning up.
So it was back to pulling out the trusty notebook and a time I believe was the happiest and most rewarding of her life.
The cut and thrust of the newsroom, a weekly column and regular appearances on radio and TV. All while still caring for her babies.
Yes she was fearless in her writing. Caring more about the public’s right to know than getting a Christmas card from a key contact.
Bec considered having her car tyres slashed, death threats and constant threats by trolls to be part of the contract that was unfortunately necessary to practise her craft.
If traditional media is to survive in this age of digital noise, media managers need to harness these strong, intelligent and fearless women. Often it is seen to be easier to park headstrong women with columns. I am not trying to diminish the importance of these columns, rather the broader fight for relevance and survival.
One of her happiest times was as a panellist with Tony Squires and Mikey Robbins talking sport on ABC TV’s weekly show The Fat.
Boy, oh boy, did she love that – and them.
A year or two with the same crew on the breakfast team at FM radio’s Vega. Alas, early starts and scripted, rigid management weren’t a good mix. It was during this period that one of the most used words in her vocabulary gained broader public acceptance. Gibberer. She was proud to use it against herself but drew the line at another of her overused words. Dribbler.
While this was happening around her, Bec managed to cover five Olympic Games. It was her rite of passage.
One of her closest buddies over those years was one Raelene Boyle. An Aussie athlete who was denied an Olympic gold medal by an Eastern bloc drug cheat.
Now Rebecca had the final pieces of her lifelong moral code – a determined and passionate war against drug cheats in sport (Hi there Gal? Hi there Jobe?) along with her vendetta against racism (all power to you, Goodsey).
The other compass pointer was already built into her at St Hilda’s by a headmistress who, as Alan Jones so eloquently wrote in his tribute, imbued students with an acceptance that, in an adult world, they could be as good or better as the next person, man or woman.
The joy of watching son Tom row for Australia in both under-23s and opens was so special for all our family. After countless early morning drives to Penrith for training and chasing Tom around the world in regattas, our Bec considered herself an expert.
She would argue with coaches or anyone who would listen about who should be in the bow or stroke seats, the quality of the coaches and the blazer brigade.
Rebecca loved her Swannies, long before it became fashionable to do so in Sydney, while still keeping an eye on her childhood heroes, the mighty Blues of Carlton.
She adored her Broncos and the Maroons (no surprise there!) Her first sporting passion of rugby union had dimmed if not faded away. Too little time to explain but I think most understand why.
Hobbies? Top of the list was Pret-a-Porter and the subsequent almost daily courier deliveries. Her next joy was gossip closely followed by collecting parking tickets.
Rules and regulation were for others. Rebecca always insisted she was shy.
Something that using her own self-assessment methodology has caused me now to understand that Donald Trump is equally shy and retiring.
Maybe this shyness was the reason she always had such an unusual greeting for friends and family. Whenever she walked through the door of our family home she screamed “Yayyyyy” … and in bidding friends farewell it was always “Rock on”.
One of the cruel ironies of our Bec is that 16 years ago she put her hand up to MC the previously little known Nelune Foundation’s Lilac Ball which supports breast cancer victims. This was 12 years before she contracted the disease herself.
Since that day, Rebecca’s cajoling of the audience in the room each year has raised more than $18 million.
The diminutive Nelune has asked me to announce a lasting legacy in a named research fellowship, the Rebecca Wilson Fellowship in Breast Cancer Research at the Garvan Institute of Medical Research in Darlinghurst.
And while we’re at it, John Wylie, chairman of the Australian Sports Commission, has advised me that Rebecca is the recipient of the ASC’s Lifetime Achievement Award in sports media to be presented at their annual dinner in February. He has asked that Tom and Will be there to accept it on her behalf.
And now we finally have a name for our lovely farm that Bec made so welcoming – Rebecca Louise. So, I have reached the end, but for four words: Rock on, darling Bec.