Hamilton

Sarah Sophia Willis (Reynolds) was born 1859 in the Victorian country town of Clunes. Her parents were:

Joseph Wells Willis (died Forbes 1902) and

Maryann Maria (Davidson) born - 1824 Bombay, India (died  5th August 1909 Forbes)

They married in Bombay, India, in 1854.

The parents of Maryann Maria Davidson were:

William Davidson - born Scotland -  Surgeon in the Black Watch Regiment stationed in Bombay, India.

Maryann Maria - born Scotland - died 1825 (in childbirth) Bombay, India.

The parents of Joseph were: Daniel Willis and Sophia Wells.

 Pictured above: Sarah Sophia (Willis) Reynolds

Thanks to James Thorn, great-grandson of Sarah, for sharing this photograph and information.

Parents of Sarah Willis: Mary Ann Maria (nee Davidson) and Joseph Wells Willis. Mary Ann was born 1824 in Bombay India - Joseph was born Tunbridge Wells, England 1819.

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Dad always loved his career in showbiz. He often used to say that while other men were waking up and going off to the office, he was able to lie in bed. This mean’t that Dad was always away at nights, and during my childhood he was often away working and on weekends as a young child I hardly ever saw him as he had to do rehearsals in the afternoons and shows at night. But that was normal for me. When Dad was home during the day his great passion was to work in his garden, he just loved it.

More backtracking…when Dad left Sydney in the late 1940’s he decided he needed a new name, he always felt that Reid was bad luck to him, so he changed his name to George Raymond. I do not know how he decided on this name but it stuck and I even went through school under then name Raymond. I was 18 before I learned my real name was Reid.

The 1980’s brought high’s and the deepest low’s to Dad. By 1982, at the age of 70, he was almost fully retired when in May of that year he suffered a near fatal aneurysm. All his life, unaware, he had been carrying around in his right temporal lobe a tangled mess of blood vessels and they simply burst. He very nearly died. He recovered but his health was never the same; a heavy smoker all his adult life he had been diagnosed with emphysema in 1977 and this only exacerbated it. He really did recover well, against all the doctors expectations - he was a real fighter - but was left impaired by periodical fits and a fast progressing lung disease. In 1984 Mum and Dad sold the house in North Manly and moved to Gosford.

In Gosford Dad had to take things easy…and he hated it. He did what gardening he could, bought some hens, and sat outside in the garden working on his tan. He loved to listen to the John Laws Show each day and then watch the Ray Martin Show at Midday.  He saw a lot of old friends on that show…Ricky May, Barry Sandford, Jan Adele, Lucky Grills and Johnny Nichol.

The fits came more frequently, he was on 12 pills a day, and often sat with an oxygen mask on his face. One day in June 1988 he sat down at the phone and started calling up as many people as he had phone numbers for…just for a chat. He then started trying to track down people he had known many years before, friends from his days in Brisbane and the Gold Coast…even back in old Auburn. A few he managed to contact…most had since passed away.  It was around this time that he sat me down to talk with me.  He looked at my two children aged two and nine months playing on the carpet…he loved his grandchildren and even called my two year old son, Patrick, the golden boy. He asked me to promise that Mum would never be left alone after he was gone, I promised that she would not. This shocked me as he never spoke like this.

Early July Dad took ill, seriously ill. He was admitted to Gosford Hospital where he suffered one seizure too many, and the emphysema had really taken hold. He had always said, on previous hospital visits, that when they put you in a room on your own you are as good as finished.  This is what they did. And, unbelievably, his room was room number 13. Mum said she had never known a hospital to have a room numbered 13 for obvious reasons…

On the 15th July Dad had deteriorated and was mostly comatose. I sat with him that evening before I went off to work. His hair, always so thick and luxuriant, was tangled and messy. He had always been such a vain man, so conscious of his appearance, so I brushed it well and applied some cream to his dried parched lips - a result of the oxygen mask on his face. I kissed him and told him how much I loved him and that I would be back in the morning to see him.

He died just after midnight, in the earliest hour of July 16th 1988.  Even though we had all prepared ourselves for so long for this time, it still came as a shock.  Dad always loved the American comedian Jack Benny. Two days after his death a Jack Benny documentary was being shown on TV…I went to pick up the phone to call Dad to tell him about it, only to realise he was no longer there to tell. Even today, nearly twenty years later, I still have to pinch myself to remind myself that he is gone.

Dad had a wonderful life; exciting, varied, full…he adored his family and he loved his career. He loved applause. He was dynamic, flamboyant, generous to a fault…sensitive,difficult, moody…cranky sometimes. He was funny, with the driest wit I have ever encountered. He loved animals and flowers. But above all else Dad had the life he wanted - he always did everything his way.

Above: Dad pictured 1983.

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From this point I will call June ‘Mum’ for obvious reasons. I must back track here: not long after Dad moved from Brisbane to the Gold Coast, about 1950/51, he made a visit to Sydney to visit his mother, Bernice, in Auburn. He found Bernice  suffering from dementia and living alone in the house and almost crippled with arthritis. Dad made arrangements for his mother to be moved to a hospital in Goodna, just outside Brisbane, where she would be cared for and where he could visit her more readily. Dad sold the house in Auburn eventually. Bernice continued to live in the hospital at Goodna until her death.

In 1956 Dad and Mum moved down to Sydney, first living at Northbridge. It was about this time that Dad received news from Brisbane that his mother, Bernice, had died. They then bought a house in High Street Willoughby in 1958. During this time Dad established himself around Sydney as a solo cabaret act; also in 1959 Dad and Mum both had small roles in the 1959 film Summer of the Seventeenth Doll appearing alongside Ernest Borgnine, Sir John Mills, Angela Lansbury and Anne Baxter. Mum said their scenes were filmed at the Atranza Studios, later called the ABC studios, in French’s Forest north of Sydney. Dad and Mum then regularly toured rural NSW with the ‘Rick and Thel Show’ as part of the tour troupe headed by the popular Australian country music husband & wife duo in 1960/61.

Dad established himself as a successful act, fiddle player/comedian/compere, in the clubs and nightspots of Sydney in the 1960’s. He often had regular spots at the Silver Spade Room in the Chevron Hotel at Kings Cross as well as Chequers, and worked with international artists such as Ethel Merman, Tony Martin and Nat King Cole. After I was born in 1962, and then my sister in 1965, Dad was at the height of his career and sometimes took us, along with Mum, on tours taking in many towns of rural NSW as well as Victoria where he played at the Hampton Hotel  in Brighton for two weeks as the headlining act. In the 60’s he also appeared on In Melbourne Tonight hosted by Graham Kennedy.

In 1971, after we had moved to North Manly, Dad signed on with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation to tour Vietnam with fellow entertainers to do shows for the soldiers in places like Vung Tau. I remember the whole band coming to rehearse in our house just before they left…what a day that was, the house literally shook with music! during the rest of the 70’s Dad regularly worked the clubs of Sydney and NSW but towards to late 70’s complained about the work slowing down due to the clubs’ new practice of importing second rate acts from the UK…those which we saw on the Royal Command Performance on TV. The club managers claimed that audiences wanted to see more acts from abroad. In 1972 Dad was compering a show at a club in Sydney and introduced to the audience a new act; a young woman from Galga with a beautiful voice…Julie Anthony.  Dad often worked on cruises; the Orsova, Arcadia, Fairstar among many. Sometimes he took a drop in salary in return for taking us along with him and having an A deck family suite cabin.

In 1973 Dad’s friend, the country music legend Tex Morton, asked him to play the fiddle part on a new song he was recording about the 1972 Melbourne Cup winner Gunsynd.  The song was called ‘The Goondiwindi Grey’  and was a number one chart hit. I sat in on that recording at the old EMI studios in Sydney on a rainy day in 1973. It was during the late 70’s that Dad got back into acting and appeared in many TV commercials and series such as Certain Women.  In 1979 Dad declared himself semi-retired and wished to devote more of his time to his gardening and had even set up a nursery called the Willow Glen Nursery at our home at North Manly. He bought his first plants for the venture from a young bloke named Don Burke who ran a plant nursery at Terry Hills, north of Sydney. Trouble was Dad was such a devoted gardener that he fell in love with most of the plants he bought and subsequently could not bring himself to sell them!

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