Joyce Fitzpatrick | |
---|---|
Born | Adelaide, South Australia, Australia | 15 July 1922
Died | 21 January 2018 Adelaide, South Australia, Australia | (aged 95)
Occupation | educator |
Known for | instituting reforms in South Australian schools to enable parents to play a more pivotal role |
Marjory Joyce Fitzpatrick AO (née Cawte, 15 July 1922 – 21 January 2018) was an Australian education advocate, author and a flight sergeant with the Women's Auxiliary Australian Air Force.[1][2]
Fitzpatrick is credited with helping institute reforms in South Australia which enabled parents to have more input in how their children's schools were managed.[1]
Fitzpatrick was born in Torrensville in the western suburbs of Adelaide, her father being a school headmaster. During her childhood, Fitzpatrick's family moved around South Australia living in such places as Streaky Bay, Waikerie, Solomontown and Plympton.[1]
She attended Adelaide High School but left early to pursue employment as a secretary.[1]
In 1941, following the outbreak of the second world war, Fitzpatrick joined the Women's Auxiliary Australian Air Force and relocated to Melbourne initially to assist with the shortage of male telegraphists.[1]
However, she rose to the rank of flight sergeant with the Z Force unit.[1][2]
Fitzpatrick married Ron Fitzpatrick, a Rat of Tobruk who she had met at a Melbourne railway station in 1942.[1]
With her husband becoming a school headmaster, the couple moved around South Australia and lived in various communities such as Whyalla, Coonalbyn, Bowman, Moorak, Port Augusta and Morphett Vale.[1]
Fitzpatrick began lobbying for parents to have a stronger role within the schools their children attended, and ultimately became the president of the South Australian Association of School Parents Communities.[1] In 1975, Fitzpatrick was one of the delegates who spoke at a rally of the Southern Eyre Peninsula Schools Welfare Association where she argued for a new scheme to assist high school students who were required to leave the local area for the final two years of secondary education.[3]
Fitzpatrick is credited with instituting sweeping reforms in the 1980s which enabled parents to have a better say in how their children's school were being managed.[1] She was frequently invited to speak at education seminars and conduct workshops for parents.[4][5][6][7]
Fitzpatrick had a great interest in writing and in 1987 wrote a biography recounting the life of Edith Strangway which was published in The Aboriginal and Islander Health Worker Journal.[8]
In 1997 she helped establish a writer's group in Goolwa called "Sand Writers" where she wrote numerous short stories and poems which were published by the group.[1][9]
In 2007, Fitzpatrick and her husband invited eight World War II veterans to come together and share their wartime stories which were published in a book, The Stories of Us.[1]
Her husband Ron Fitzpatrick died at the age of 94 in 2013.[1]
Joyce Fitzpatrick died in Adelaide on 21 January 2018.[1]
In the 1988 Australia Day Honours, Fitzpatrick was appointed as an Officer of the Order of Australia for her service to education.[10]