Lace - by Pat Hesse (a digital story from the Lake Illawarra MAP Project)

MENTOR WRITER: Susan Kennedy
SYNOPSIS: Edith was a woman of practical politics, for the sake of her family
SCRIPT: There is a tiny little park down on the lake foreshore named after my mother the Selina Edith Lacey Park.  She was Lena or Aunty Lena to all her family and friends.  All her friends from politics called her Lace. 
 
Mum loved politics.  She was very community minded, a real people person. There were a lot of unemployed people back then and the bakers used to give them stale bread.  Mum would warm it up and my brothers would go and deliver it to them.
 
Anyone she could help, she would.  I think because she lost her mother when she was 12 and she was farmed out to relatives who didnt treat her very well.  I think she wanted to make sure that didnt happen to us.   She even looked after 10 or our cousins who came to lives with us in hard times for their own families. Family was everything to her.
 
Mum would have been a councilor in Marrickville where we lived, except that someone another person, in another branch thought that women shouldnt be involved in politics.  When we moved to Windang she was asked to set up a branch of the Labor Party.  She was the secretary until she died in 1956. 

When she died she had a very big funeral.  There were politicians there.  We got lots of telegrams.  We got them from the Premier and other politicians. 
 
Eventually my two brothers and another sister came here to Windang.  We all wanted to be with our parents.  The reason why we have stayed so close together is tribute to my mother and her commitment to her family and community.

Category:

Film & Animation

Tags:

• Lake Illawarra
• digital story
• local politics
• women
• family
• the depression