School’s founding figure

FERNTREE Gully last month farewelled St Joseph’s College stalwart and much loved community figure Walter John ‘Jack’ Turner.
Mr Turner passed away on 19 July aged 83 following a brief battle with oesophageal cancer.
Friends and family gathered to remember his life at St John The Baptist Catholic Church in Ferntree Gully on 23 July before laying him to rest at Ferntree Gully Cemetery.
Mr Turner helped found St Joseph’s College and joined its Parents and Friends Association in 1965.
He became the group’s president in the late 1960s.
He was elected to the college board in the early 1970s and became the school’s honorary fee collector.
Mr Turner took up work in the school office as a part-time financial assistant after retiring from the ANZ bank. He still held a finance committee position to the day he died.
St Joseph’s College established the annual Jack Turner Community Service Award in 2005 to recognise his 40-plus year commitment to the school.
He each year presented it to the student considered the most community minded.
Mr Turner’s sons, Jim, Robert, Michael and John, all attended St Joseph’s and several of his grandsons now continue the tradition.
Michael has also taught at the school for 22 years.
He described his father as “inherently loyal”.
“If he joined up you had the whole of him for life – mum, the kids, the ANZ bank, the Catholic Church, Essendon, St Joe’s,” he said. Mr Turner said his father’s happiest job was working with Boronia’s Good Shepherd nuns.
“Working with those selfless Christian women he would crack jokes and have them giggling while they fought over who was going to take him to lunch,” he said.
“Cracking a joke to him was as natural as drawing breath. He couldn’t be stopped.”
Mr Turner was heavily involved with the Ferntree Gully parish throughout his life.
He loved people, numbers, crosswords and details and had an especially impressive memory for sport and people.
He volunteered at Ferntree Gully Football Club where his sons pulled on the boots.
Mr Turner said his father was humble about his own sporting prowess. “We would find out from his old mates about how good he was at cricket or tennis or rowing,” he said.
“They can’t be talking about Jack, the clumsiest man in the world.”
Mr Turner’s family described him as “a wonderful family man, who loved life and each of us unconditionally”.
Mr Turner fathered 10 children – James (Jim), Julie, Ann, Robert, Michael, Peter, Mary, Catherine, Fiona and John – with wife of 57 years, Beryl.
His 22 grandchildren described him as funny, caring, faithful, hardworking, sensitive, peaceful and welcoming.
The Turners fostered children in addition to their own family and paid school fees for others.
“Dad was generous,” Mr Turner said.