Deaths Of Islands People

Bishop Wade

The Most Rev. Thomas J. Wade, SM, Bishop of Bougainville for 30 years, died in retirement in Boston on June 11, aged 75. Cardinal Cushing, Archbishop of Boston, gave the eulogy at his funeral. A tribute to Bishop Wade, who was a much loved prelate, will appear in August

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Mr. John Bexley Sedgers

Mr. J. B. Sedgers, chairman and managing director of the W.R. Car penter offshoot, New Guinea Com pany Ltd., for about 10 years, and an employee of the Carpenter Group for over 40 years, died in Sydney in June. He was about 70.

He joined Carpenters in 1917 as a shipping clerk at its Sydney office and shortly after spent a time as a supercargo on the company ship Mascot, which plied between Sydney and the Solomons.

Mr. Sedgers put in a short period at Tulagi, then the capital of the Solomons, before he was transferred to Rabaul, New Guinea, where Car penter operations were then under the control of Mr. B. B. Perriman, currently a director of the group’s parent company.

He worked at Kavieng, New Ireland, and Salamaua and Wau near the territory’s goldfields. When war broke out Messrs. Sedgers and Perri man were responsible for evacuating all civilians from Wau. About 180 people were airlifted out and then Mr. Sedgers, with the rest of the civilians, walked the 200-odd miles to Port Moresby.

Mr. Sedgers worked in Sydney for Carpenters during the rest of the war and in 1945 he was sent to Madang and later Rabaul, where in 1951 he was appointed chairman and manag ing director of the NG Company.

He retired in the early 1960’s and is survived by Mrs. Jean Sedgers, and his children Tony, Jaccie and Jill.

Mrs. Barbara Jennings Mrs. B. Jennings, a former resident of New Guinea, died in NSW, re cently from a heart attack.

As Mrs. Barbara Dickinson she lived with her first husband at Kokopo in New Britain until 1941 when the evacuation took place. Mr.

Dickinson stayed behind and was among the many prisoners-of-war who perished after the Japanese landed.

After the war she re-married and settled al Bibbenluke, NSW. She be

came a member of the New Guinea Women’s Club of Sydney.

She will be long remembered as the amiable and charming person who played the piano at numerous social occasions in Rabaul and Kokopo for many years.

Mr. S. A. Lonergan Mr. Steven Ainsworth Lonergan, a longtime New Guinea hand, died in Sydney in June, aged 70.

Born in Hobart, Tasmania, Mr.

Lonergan served in World War I.

After the war he returned to Tas mania and then about 1923 joined the public service of New Guinea’s Man dated Territory.

By 1940 he was Assistant Govern ment Secretary to this government.

After the war he became Govern ment Secretary to the combined terri tories.

In 1951, when Mt. Lamington, out side Popondetta, erupted, Mr. Loner gan helped organise the transportation of supplies from Port Moresby to Popondetta.

When government departments were re-organised, the Secretary’s Department was scrapped and, in 1955, a Civil Affairs Department set up with Mr. Lonergan as its director.

He retired in 1959 and went to live in Australia.

His widow, Mrs. Irene Lonergan, formerly of Norfolk Island, is to re turn to Wau, NG, in July for a six months’ stay.

“Steve” Lonergan was an intensely interesting person who maintained a balanced, but not dispassionate, attitude towards life. He was good company, with a whole fund of stories of events and personalities. Blessed with a memory for detail, he was re markably intelligent, and a farsighted, systematic public service executive.

Steve was a fine soldier, a Gallipoli veteran at 16, who was severely wounded in subsequent fighting in France. He used to say he learned the fundamentals of administration through his later service with Aus tralian Army HQ in London. World War II saw Steve as a Lt.-Col. in Angau, principally on the civil ad ministration side, serving with Major- General B. M. Morris and Brig. D.

M. Cleland, later Sir Donald.

Never one to tolerate “empire building” where national and terri tory interests were at stake, perhaps

his most significant activity in the early days of World War 11, in Rabaul, where he was Assistant Government Secretary, was his over riding command in the distribution of military intelligence. It was supremely successful, but it provoked some unfortunate inter-service re action. After escorting a very ill and tired Sir Walter McNicoll, then Ad ministrator of New Guinea, to Aus tralia in 1942, following the bombing and evacuation of Rabaul, he became persona non grata with the Bth Military Command—a situation which was not resolved until late in 1943, In the meantime, he with Leonard Murray, of Papua, advised the Commonwealth to suspend civil administration in the two territories, advice which was promptly accepted, and he then settled down to a spell of serious intelligence activity in Sydney.

About mid-1943, the New Guinea Military Command was persuaded it had made an error in preventing Lonergan’s return. He came to Port Moresby later that year and was suc cessively promoted to a number of senior positions in Angau. After the peace negotiations in 1945, he or ganised the team which made the initial preparations in P-NG for the re-establishment of civil administra tion.

“Steve” Lonergan was a man very much concerned for the progress of P-NG and the welfare of its people.

He did a lot for the territory, though he was not often in the public eye, since he believed strictly in the re straints imposed on a civil servant.

He was kindly and helpful to those under him and within his lights was always ready to aid the underdog. He insisted on performance of duty and on standards of behaviour. He didn’t stand for fools and those who broke the few canons in the territory’s social code. —Kevin Sheekey.

Mrs. Irene Waikanga Tipene

Mrs. Irene Tipene, a resident of Sydney for about 40 years and a longtime member of the Polynesian Club and the now-defunct Maori Club, died in a Sydney hospital on June 27. She was 67.

Mrs. Tipene, originally from Auck land, NZ, arrived in Sydney on her honeymoon about 1930.

She is survived by her husband, Mr. Victor Robert Tipene, retired, of Seven Hills, Sydney, and their children, George, of Chester Hill, Sydney, and Margaret, of Rotorua, NZ. • For a tribute to the late Mesulame Rakuro see p. 133.