Forward July 2016 | Page 50

OLD GUILDFORDIANS Paul Murray Journalist and Media Personality Old Guildfordian of the Year 2015 With a long and outstanding career in broadcasting and journalism, Paul Murray (St 1963-1967) has built an impressive reputation for intriguing articles and hard-hitting interviews, including those of former Prime Minister John Howard and movie star John Travolta. Paul’s outstanding achievements were acknowledged at the Old Guildfordians’ Annual Dinner, on 10 October 2015, when he was recognised as the 2015 Old Guildfordian of the Year. Paul, a second generation Old Guildfordian, feels tremendous gratitude for the family sacrifices that made his connection with Guildford Grammar School possible. His maternal grandmother, Dorothy, met his grandfather, Keith, in 1913 while she was working as a graduate teacher in a one-teacher school at Lake Hinds, 20-odd kilometres west of Wongan Hills. Later Keith, a farmer training to become an Anglican Priest at St John’s College in Perth, and Dorothy would travel on the train together from Wongan Hills to Perth, and on one journey they noticed the Chapel of St Mary and St George being built at Guildford Grammar School. In 1914, with war clouds hanging over the world, Dorothy remembered Keith saying, “I’d like our son to attend that school, it has all the right ingredients to mould boys into men”. Paul Murray in his application photograph for the School. 50 Working in the realms of both journalism and radio, Paul Murray has built a reputation for intriguing articles and hard-hitting interviews. “I’d like our son to attend that school, it has all the right ingredients to mould boys into men”. In 1915 Dorothy was posted to East Perth Primary School and Keith was still studying for the ministry and working in an Anglican church in Gosnells. By February the world was at war and their lives were suddenly turned upside down. Keith and two other students at St John’s College were anonymously sent white feathers, known as a wartime accusation of cowardice, ironically a cowardly way to make such an accusation, and all three students enlisted in the Army within days. By August Keith and Dorothy were married and early the next year Dorothy was pregnant with Paul’s father. By June 1916, after less than a year of marriage, Keith sailed with the 11th Battalion to fight the Germans in France. Just 54 days before the Armistice, on 18 September 1918 at 5.30am, Keith went over the top of the trench in the first attack by General Sir John Monash’s Australian troops on the famous Hindenburg line. Not only was this a major turning point in the war, but it changed Paul’s family forever as none of the three young trainee priests would return home. A shell landed next to Keith and tragically robbed him of the chance to meet his son, Keith Owen, born in November the year before. Having never remarried, grief-stricken Dorothy remained res