24/1/2002 A Reflection of a Friendship : Sue Beams

My name is George Huitker. I'm a school teacher at Radford College. At some point in my life I picked up the hobbies of reading, writing and putting on little plays about town and, in my earlier days, I liked to put them on in library centres...

I was recently asked at a conference to answer a rather perplexing question: what's wrong with boys as we enter the new millennium? Initially, I found that a rather daunting question to answer. Yet at that time, I was working on a book, about football ("soccer" for the Victorians present) - which I ended up dedicating to a Sue Beams (whom I suspect knew the answer) - and found that I had actually attempted to answer this question to some degree already.

I wrote the following:

"The adolescent male needs inspiration from real people too. Far away from international sports stadiums, royal palaces and Hollywood glitter, there needs to exist more gritty, imperfect but no less influential human people in their lives.

People who live in the real, everyday surrounds. People who struggle with the same things that they do, week in and week out: the pressures of constantly having to produce the goods and reach expectations; of having to cope with mistakes and errors of judgment that seem insurmountable; of having continually to find inspiration at times when it's absent... of having to work hard, regularly and incessantly even to keep up with the pace-makers; of having to resist the joys of short-term success over long-term happiness; and regardless of failures and successes, of having the tenacity to maintain survival on a daily basis with your dignity, integrity and self-confidence intact.

In reality, it can take very long, uninspiring and sometimes painful lengths of time to achieve things. This is where good coaches, teachers, leaders and mentors come into their own. They are the constants in their charges' fluctuating allegiances, moods, abilities and desires, showing them ways of making the struggle in small things like sport, and larger things like existence, something well worth working at. In the case of boys in this new millennium, more real, gritty and human inspiration is needed to give them a better start."

I was a lucky boy, in that at a very early age, my parents aside, I had a very special, real, gritty, sincere and unwavering patron to assist me in getting a better start in doing the things that I was to do in life... and that person was Sue.

It is evident, looking around the congregation today, that Sue has touched the hearts of many. I imagine most would testify to the unequivocal support and interest she had shown to so many different types of people of all ages over many exciting years. And I fondly remember eight little boys for whom she had an admirable patience and unlimited enthusiasm...

I cannot imagine what Sue must have been thinking when I fronted up with seven mates (all of whom I had convinced to do some silly play I wrote about pigs in space), all of us dressed in spacemen gear and me in an awful orange dress I had stolen from my mother's wardrobe...

I told Sue I had - and would have - for every Curtin Library Holiday Program for the next fifty years or so, a full scale musical production that I had concocted and rehearsed in our poor, battered lounge-room. And that the Curtin Library was to be the privileged venue to stage my extravaganzas.

Sue helped me copy and distribute the posters we shoddily drew; build the flimsy cardboard sets and props necessary to convince audiences that pigs could fly, explore and eventually tame the nether regions of space and time; she'd help us put on the makeup which, as eleven year-old boys, we knew was necessary for theatre but perhaps a little sissy. (Even when, ironically, wearing your mother's garish, orange number.)

Sue would encourage her book-borrowers of all shapes, sizes and ages to come and see these artistically-challenged but desperately sincere performances, all from the hyper-creative minds of a bunch of young wanna-be performers who really, deep down, only wanted to be loved, supported, encouraged and nurtured for something they had created. It was only a slight extension from the finger-paintings we'd made for our mums at Holiday programs only a few years before...

I guess, in retrospect, playing all-singing-and-dancing Space Invaders on a makeshift stage in the public library was more productive for all of us then spending hours of time glued, unmoving and catatonically, to a Nintendo or video slot-machine... or smoking or stealing.

Sue not only allowed our imaginations to soar through the books she'd recommend and stamp for us, but she also allowed us a platform from which to jump into the deep space of adolescence - and eventually our adult lives.

I'm the only one of those eight small souls still doing theatre and writing/acting/directing plays. But I'm certainly not the only one that's taken from those years of play-acting and bamboozling audiences - something that has lasted beyond that wonderful time. How had Sue touched us?

She'd allowed us the space, time and dignity to express ourselves which - I like to think, now as adults - we do competently in the things we all do - be it inventing a computer program for Defence; running our own businesses; exploring the wonder of other countries and lifestyles through literature, through film and through travel; and hopefully, and happily, in passing on some of this space, time and promotion of creativity - that act of giving something to the world - on to the people we love around us.

In many ways, my mother and I deeply regret not having been able to see Sue over the last few months. To tell, her, once more, how much I am indebted to her for her nurture and encouragement right up until she left for Melbourne. (She even returned to Canberra briefly in 2001 to be there at the launch of my "footy" book.)

But I do also feel this much: every time I set pen to paper (or finger to keyboard as it's done these days), foot to floorboard or stand in front of a class of green, wide and open eyes... if, in even a small way, I inspire another person to be creative (which, I repeat, essentially means to give something new, fresh and substantial to the world) then I do it with greater conviction because of Susan Beams.

You are always in my audiences, Sue. Your passing away will not change that. Nor will it change that feeling - which I know is shared by so many others - that my life has been the richer and happier for your part in it.