farmdoc's blog post number 85

Simon Ulman, my Dad, died 39 years ago today – eight days before his 57th birthday. I was just over 22 years old, and half way through the final year of my medical course. During a 2-week live-in refresher at the Royal Women’s Hospital, early one Monday morning – I recall it like it was yesterday – I took a phone call from our family GP Lionel Rosengarten, who told me straight-out that my father had died suddenly of a heart attack in Surfers Paradise. My Dad’s brother Peter had been gravely ill with heart disease for some time, and I screamed into the phone at Doc Lionel that he had the wrong brother, and it was Peter who had died. But there was no mistake, and my Mum’s 26 years of widowhood had begun. (Uncle Peter died two weeks later.) My Mum and Dad were married in 1943 when my Dad was in the Army, and after his discharge his entire work career was in the motor tyre business, almost all self-employed with his brothers Peter and Gersh. He loved cars, so he was overjoyed – as was I – when on my 18th birthday I obtained my drivers license and he surprised me with a Morris 1100 (rego JAA486). He was a kind man. Until aged in his mid-late 40s he lived with his in-laws – which can’t have been psychologically good for him – without complaint. He was a mad keen golfer. In his early 40s when I was aged 7 or 8, he and Mum were playing golf at Cranbourne with their best friends Shirley and Ralph Samuel, leaving the Samuel and Ulman children to play together in a park near the clubhouse. The oldest Samuel son, now chairman of the ACCC, swung a golf club which gashed my left eyebrow. Word of this injury reached the golfers, my Dad came running, and en route he felt his first angina chest pain. Later he developed Type 2 diabetes. He was a smoker and somewhat overweight. When due to his health he was no longer able to play golf, he took up lawn bowls with some success. He never travelled outside Australia. And he disliked air travel. He often went to Sydney (the Australian Head Office of the Goodyear Tyre & Rubber Company was in Granville), and he travelled by train – the Spirit of Progress. He knew Sweetheart Vivienne for a few years, and he loved her. Of course – who could blame him for that? But he died about 2¼ years before November 1971 when darling Kate was born, so he never saw any of his seven grandchildren. Oh how he would have adored them. On 2 June 2004 I reached a major milestone in my life – I had lived to be older than my Dad did. And I have four beautiful and amazing grandchildren including Zephyr. I am blessed. But I miss my Dad.