GVGjr
11-02-2007, 01:23 AM
ROSLYN Smorgon still believes that hers has been a fortunate life, a belief that has not wavered even despite being diagnosed with bowel cancer four years ago.
Well known as one of the more high-profile women in the AFL family — husband David is the longest-serving Victorian club president, now entering his 12th season with the Western Bulldogs — her illness and the management of it have been a private matter until now.
This columnist caught up with her shortly after she had been named in the Australia Day honours, for services to the community, an honour her husband received several years ago and an occasion she had planned to celebrate only with friends and family.
But Bulldogs chief executive Campbell Rose was determined that his president's brave and largely tireless wife receive some public recognition. Roslyn's work has been on many levels but in terms of her contribution to the football club and the AFL, Rose believes there are few presidents' wives who put in more.
Said Andrew Demetriou, one of several AFL executives to have experienced loss through cancer: "Any wife or partner of a club president has to be commended for the work they put in, which is often thankless and obviously voluntary.
"None more so than Ros. To last 12 years in the job as David has is remarkable in itself but she has been a remarkable support to him, always with a smile on her face and always friendly and obviously so in love with her husband. We always ask how she is but she tends not to talk about her illness too much."
Roslyn hints that 2007 could be her husband's last at the Bulldogs but adds with a smile that there is always so much more work to be done. And, she says: "A premiership would be nice." If David Smorgon has a wish, though, it is not for a flag.
The only time she becomes visibly emotional is when she is asked how her husband has coped with her cancer. "He's been amazing," she says, "very supportive, very strong and incredibly positive. If this has changed anything, it's slowed him down a little bit, which is a good thing. But I would never ask him to give up the football club, not unless things became a lot worse."
Diagnosed in February 2003, Roslyn resolved to retain as much normality as humanly possible during her treatment, refused to dwell upon it and gave up none of her extensive public work that already included extensive fund-raising for Breast Cancer Network Australia and the Peter MacCallum Cancer Institute.
Her one stipulation was that her increasing band of grandchildren should not see her during her worst days. Annual rituals such as picking and harvesting olives from the trees in her back garden with those children have continued and weekly ones such as collecting her eldest grandchild from kindergarten became challenges she set during her toughest times.
When the AFL nervously hosted its first modest women's forum outdoors at Telstra Dome on a freezing midweek night in May 2004, Roslyn was the only partner of a club president to attend. She already had founded her club's women's group — the Bulldog Belles — which every year tries to change the life of two young women from the Western suburbs via scholarships. The only games she misses both locally and interstate have been those that her treatment prevented her from attending.
She says the Bulldogs community has been wonderful to her, singling out Chris Grant and his wife Melanie along with Rodney Eade and his family and former clubmen, including Terry Wallace.
The cancer returned for Roslyn 14 months ago and she is in the process now of another course of treatment.
While she admits to some very bad days, only her family and fiercely close group of friends get to hear about them.
"When you find out the first time, it's bad. But you resolve to get through it and get through the treatment and get better. When you find out the second time, it's a bit more devastating.
"It's hard to accept after everything, all the treatment and the work in getting rid of it that it could come back. I always believed I was going to get well and be well again."
And yet Roslyn describes herself as one of life's most fortunate citizens, having grown up in a fiercely Jewish, fiercely Australian home in which night-time meetings and community work were the norm. The Western Bulldogs and the people involved became an extension of her early life, just as has her work at Monash University and Mount Scopus College.
While the Bulldogs have appeared a club existing on the brink of survival for close to two decades, the Smorgons have given the financially troubled entity a stability that has not always been just about appearance.
Roslyn simply says she has been blessed not only with the energy but also the wealth to allow her to work for nothing to make a difference to her football club and various other communities.
She looks around, she says, at other women and men like her who have given nothing back to their society and wonders why they don't go out and get a life. And she insists she would not change anything about her own.
Roslyn's parents Phillip and Marie Hirsh are still alive and arrived in Australia from Europe in 1927 and 1939 respectively. Her own three boys — Dean, 37, Ricky, 35, and Dale, 33 — had all been born by the time she was 24, which is when she returned to university to complete her arts degree.
She has six grandchildren, though she remains some years from her 60th birthday. She laments that not all of them support the Bulldogs.
Refusing to dwell on the long-term future, her short-term plans centre upon her husband's coming 60th birthday. "I have never taken my family for granted and, really, my illness didn't need to remind me of that," she said.
Bulldog Belle (http://www.realfooty.theage.com.au/realfooty/articles/2007/02/10/1170524347422.html)
Well known as one of the more high-profile women in the AFL family — husband David is the longest-serving Victorian club president, now entering his 12th season with the Western Bulldogs — her illness and the management of it have been a private matter until now.
This columnist caught up with her shortly after she had been named in the Australia Day honours, for services to the community, an honour her husband received several years ago and an occasion she had planned to celebrate only with friends and family.
But Bulldogs chief executive Campbell Rose was determined that his president's brave and largely tireless wife receive some public recognition. Roslyn's work has been on many levels but in terms of her contribution to the football club and the AFL, Rose believes there are few presidents' wives who put in more.
Said Andrew Demetriou, one of several AFL executives to have experienced loss through cancer: "Any wife or partner of a club president has to be commended for the work they put in, which is often thankless and obviously voluntary.
"None more so than Ros. To last 12 years in the job as David has is remarkable in itself but she has been a remarkable support to him, always with a smile on her face and always friendly and obviously so in love with her husband. We always ask how she is but she tends not to talk about her illness too much."
Roslyn hints that 2007 could be her husband's last at the Bulldogs but adds with a smile that there is always so much more work to be done. And, she says: "A premiership would be nice." If David Smorgon has a wish, though, it is not for a flag.
The only time she becomes visibly emotional is when she is asked how her husband has coped with her cancer. "He's been amazing," she says, "very supportive, very strong and incredibly positive. If this has changed anything, it's slowed him down a little bit, which is a good thing. But I would never ask him to give up the football club, not unless things became a lot worse."
Diagnosed in February 2003, Roslyn resolved to retain as much normality as humanly possible during her treatment, refused to dwell upon it and gave up none of her extensive public work that already included extensive fund-raising for Breast Cancer Network Australia and the Peter MacCallum Cancer Institute.
Her one stipulation was that her increasing band of grandchildren should not see her during her worst days. Annual rituals such as picking and harvesting olives from the trees in her back garden with those children have continued and weekly ones such as collecting her eldest grandchild from kindergarten became challenges she set during her toughest times.
When the AFL nervously hosted its first modest women's forum outdoors at Telstra Dome on a freezing midweek night in May 2004, Roslyn was the only partner of a club president to attend. She already had founded her club's women's group — the Bulldog Belles — which every year tries to change the life of two young women from the Western suburbs via scholarships. The only games she misses both locally and interstate have been those that her treatment prevented her from attending.
She says the Bulldogs community has been wonderful to her, singling out Chris Grant and his wife Melanie along with Rodney Eade and his family and former clubmen, including Terry Wallace.
The cancer returned for Roslyn 14 months ago and she is in the process now of another course of treatment.
While she admits to some very bad days, only her family and fiercely close group of friends get to hear about them.
"When you find out the first time, it's bad. But you resolve to get through it and get through the treatment and get better. When you find out the second time, it's a bit more devastating.
"It's hard to accept after everything, all the treatment and the work in getting rid of it that it could come back. I always believed I was going to get well and be well again."
And yet Roslyn describes herself as one of life's most fortunate citizens, having grown up in a fiercely Jewish, fiercely Australian home in which night-time meetings and community work were the norm. The Western Bulldogs and the people involved became an extension of her early life, just as has her work at Monash University and Mount Scopus College.
While the Bulldogs have appeared a club existing on the brink of survival for close to two decades, the Smorgons have given the financially troubled entity a stability that has not always been just about appearance.
Roslyn simply says she has been blessed not only with the energy but also the wealth to allow her to work for nothing to make a difference to her football club and various other communities.
She looks around, she says, at other women and men like her who have given nothing back to their society and wonders why they don't go out and get a life. And she insists she would not change anything about her own.
Roslyn's parents Phillip and Marie Hirsh are still alive and arrived in Australia from Europe in 1927 and 1939 respectively. Her own three boys — Dean, 37, Ricky, 35, and Dale, 33 — had all been born by the time she was 24, which is when she returned to university to complete her arts degree.
She has six grandchildren, though she remains some years from her 60th birthday. She laments that not all of them support the Bulldogs.
Refusing to dwell on the long-term future, her short-term plans centre upon her husband's coming 60th birthday. "I have never taken my family for granted and, really, my illness didn't need to remind me of that," she said.
Bulldog Belle (http://www.realfooty.theage.com.au/realfooty/articles/2007/02/10/1170524347422.html)