Full life comes to a close
QUEENSCLIFF personality and former ABC presenter John Reid is being remembered as a fun-loving and intelligent man with an extraordinary talent for radio.
After many decades brining the news to people around the nation, Mr Reid succumbed to frontotemporal dementia and motor neurone disease last weekend. He was 75.
His broadcast career spanned many radio stations and much of Western Victoria and New Zealand.
Mr Reid’s daughter Shannon Reid said her father “lived life to the full through adventures and experience”.
“To many people he was journalist, broadcaster and newsreader John Reid — to me, he was my fun-loving dad who I loved and looked up to,” Ms Reid said. “Whatever he wanted to have a go at, he did: broadcasting, farming, family, writing and publishing books, vigneron, travelling … he did it all and did it well.
“That was the perfectionist in him.”
Mr Reid was born on September 10, 1943 to Irish church minister Cecil Reid and Hollis Reid, who was a milliner from Geelong.
He spent much of his childhood in Hobart, where he discovered a love of radio.
“One day, an excited eightyear-old John came home from school and told his father he and some mates had been invited to Peter’s Pals —a radio show started by Peters Ice Cream in 1947 and broadcast between 5-6pm in four Australian cities including 7HO in Hobart,” Ms Reid said.
His radio career started at 3KZ in Melbourne, and blossomed at 3GL in Geelong, AMV Channel 4 in Albury, GMV6 in Shepparton, SES-8 in Mt Gambier, 3HA in Hamilton and BTV6 in Ballarat.
At Ripponlea he worked on ABC television reading the 7pm news, and he would stay with the ABC on and off until 2009.
One of his career highlights came in 1983 when he was declared News Broadcaster of the Year, an award he won several times.
It was when he was working at ABC 774 that the famous John Reid’s Poets Corner was born. Thousands of people woke up early on a Saturday morning just to hear his poetry.
His daughter recalled going to work with him and sitting under the radio console playing as he broadcast to the world.
“Our hearts broke as we watched this vibrant and intelligent man succumb to these horrible diseases; then, over the weekend, I lost my dad, and our family lost some of the glue that had bound us together,” she said.
“He was more than just a dad; he was a great friend and an exceptional mentor.
“But, radio aside, what Dad taught and inspired me to do was follow my dreams and to go for it.”
Mr Reid is survived by his wife of 50 years, Val, and his children Sean, Shannon, Benjamin and Marnie.
His funeral is at the Queenscliff Uniting Church at 1pm today.