Hamilton Family History

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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