Happy Harry McEwan
When I was studying to be a Minister of the Gospel, my student churches were two adjacent wooden churches in the inner slum areas of Melbourne. For seven years during the 1950’s and 1960’s the people of those inner slum areas were my parish.
Some of those people in those early days of ministry made a profound and lasting impact upon my life. As a young student minister commencing training at eighteen years of age, I was suddenly thrust into a position of leadership with people who were old enough to be my great‑grandparents. One such man was Happy Harry McEwen.
Reflecting upon nearly eight years of friendship with Mac I cannot think of one aspect of his life or character about which I did not like or did not admire. He was an absolutely contented and happy man, with jovial smile and personal interest in all that was happening. In his earlier life he had been a huge man, extremely tall, probably in excess of six feet six inches and weighing about 20 stone. He had been an enormously strong man, big of frame and yet always with the warmth of a genial giant.
He was an inveterate pipe smoker and I would often see him walking down the hill in Francis Street on a cold day, rugged up with coat and tartan scarf, with his back straight and erect, swinging a walking stick and with a pipe clamped between his teeth and a swirl of grey smoke trailing behind him with his ruddy cheeks and a smile permanently fixed as he spoke to neighbours, delivery boys, and dogs ‑ all with equal courtesy and happiness.
Happy Mac had been a member of the British Royal Marines all his life and had risen through the ranks to become one of those extremely rare men, a regimental sergeant major. I can believe that he would have had a voice that could bellow across a parade ground with enough strength and ferocity to make some poor private in the back of the parade snap to attention. His military bearing was seen in everything that he did, in the way he appeared, the way he walked and spoke. He was always courteous and considerate, well disciplined and you could see your face in the shine of his shoes even on the wettest of days.
Big Happy Mac loved to have my girlfriend, and later when she became my fiancee, and then later again my wife, and myself, around to his home for a meal. We enjoyed eating on the enclosed back verandah on sunny but cool Melbourne days when Mrs. Mac, always busy in the kitchen, would produce for us some of her delicious puddings.
In the age of microwave ovens and instant meals, one culinary delight I guess that has been lost from many tables, has been the old fashioned pudding and dessert.
How Mrs. Mac loved to make big puddings for us all. There would be sago puddings, baked rice custard puddings with lovely brown thick skin on the top covered with nutmeg and fresh cream, bread and butter puddings with Australian dried fruit soft and ripe throughout, and some bread and butter pudding topped with meringue which I think she called Queen pudding.
Mac had a little dog for which he would always provide a pudding as well, consisting of a couple of Arnott’s milk arrowroot biscuits with hot milk poured upon them. But before the little dog got his share of the dessert Mac would always have a couple of spoonfuls to make sure that it was just right.
On a cold Melbourne day there would be, fresh from the oven, a steaming treacle steamed pudding, or banana custard and lemon pudding. And in summer blancmange, flummery, junket and prunes, or cold custard and wine trifle.
Just the thought of this amazing array of puddings for winter or for summer is enough to make the mouth water and the years to drop away.
The highlight of Happy Mac’s life occurred during World War I. He was chosen, of all men, to be the personal batman to the First Sea Lord of the Admiralty, one Winston Churchill. He stayed with Winston Churchill throughout the First World War and then later became his friend and ally when he was in the political wilderness of the 20’s and 30’s, and Mac would have given anything to be beside “his Winnie” during World War II.
He idolized the man. He was a personal friend, driver, confidante, shoe cleaner, presser of uniforms and morning coats, one who brushed off lint and fluff and made sure the top hat was at hand, and a ready supply of cigars!
He would tell with pride how Winston asked for him to be his personal batman and of how, during a dark day in the Admiralty, a telegram was flashed around the Navy simply saying “Winnie’s back”, and that telegraphed signal brought a cheer from every ship because every British Jack Tar knew they had a man who understood them and one who would lead them well in war.
Beside Winston Churchill was always Big Mac, bodyguard, protector, driver, batman. He had an endless fund of stories that came from both First and Second World Wars, and when Mac settled in his chair with his arms crossed in front him and his hands holding the top of his walking stick, his blue eyes would gaze off into the distance and glaze over as memories would come flooding back, and he would tell the story of war and peace with the greatest Englishman of the 20th Century.
There was, however, another side of Happy Mac’s personality: he was incredibly gentle with children. This happy genial giant never had children of his own but dearly loved children. He would stop and talk to the mother wheeling her pram by and tickle the young child in the pram under the chin. He always had a story for young lads about adventure on the sea and could dig into his side pocket to find a lolly or two for any other child passing.
During this time we had developed a strong Sunday School at the Church of Christ. Many of the kids who came to our Sunday School from the slum areas had no father they could recognize. Single parent homes were quite common in our area, and sometimes blended families mixed together with children of several liaisons all being part of one family. One woman said to me proudly, pointing to a bunch of children fighting in the overcrowded kitchen, “That lot’s my lot, that lot’s his lot, and that lot is our lot.”
It occurred to me one day that if children did not have a good father figure how could they possibly understand the nature of God. So we asked Happy Harry McEwen to become a member of our Sunday School staff and placed him in the kindergarten. He used to sit in a huge chair when the first children would come, and speak to them all one at a time with kindness and friendliness. The children loved him, crawled all over the arms of the chair, onto his lap and down the other side, and with good humour he would speak to each one. I was really trying to provide those little children with a concept of what a father was really like. One child understood better than I realized, because the little boy from the slum one day pointed a dirty finger at the big man sitting in the large chair and said to me, “I know who he is ‑ he’s God!” That child would grow up having an understanding of God as being kindly, caring, loving, big, powerful, strong and gentle. All of those godlike qualities we saw in Happy Harry McEwan.
But Happy Mac was also a man of great humility.
After a few years I started printing a church paper on the oldest Gestetner ink duplicator in existence. It must have been because when it needed service, the service man from Gestetner told me he had never seen a machine like it in all of his working days, and if it wasn’t for the Gestetner name painted on it he would not have believed that such an old model had been made by their firm. But Harry Mac knew that machine and its idiosyncrasies backwards. Each sheet of paper was lovingly fed into it and came out with a perfect impression. Every sheet of paper was folded accurately and the three folds in every foolscap sheet were always identical. When Mac had folded the church paper every paper was exactly the same size as every other one. He used to type the wax stencils on a 20 inch carriage typewriter, carefully counting the letters and spaces of every line and then spacing them so that each column was justified at both ends. He always loved to include a joke for the children in “Comedy Corner” and although our little slum churches had few resources, the quality of its church paper far exceeded that of many large and wealthy establishments.
One of my last memories of Mac was when the teenagers of the church were putting on a concert in the church hall. It was an up‑tempo night and it starred young people who enjoyed life to the full. But they also asked Happy Harry McEwan to sing an item. In the middle of a youth concert this genial giant of a man now in his eighties was wheeled onto the stage in and old fashioned bath chair. He had dressed for the occasion in the uniform of a Chelsea Pensioner ‑ one of those special retirees from British Army life who lived under royal patronage. He sang the song “We are soldiers of the King, my lads”. There was hardly a dry eye when the old man had finished. We realized that the old soldier was himself fading away. But there was a nobility and a strength even in his frail old age.
Happy Harry Mac died soon after. All who knew him sorrowed at his passing but felt proud that they had known him. At his funeral I quoted one of his favourite sayings “I’ve been proud to serve my King in war and peace, and to serve the greatest Englishman that has ever lived, but my greatest pride lies in the fact that I have been a soldier of Jesus Christ.”
“They shall not grow old as we who are left grow old.
Age shall not weary them nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun, and in the morning,
We will remember them.”
I never realized what a gentleman was coming into my life after my first meeting with Happy Harry McEwan as I left him on that first occasion, walked out into the heavy air blowing from abattoirs and started my motor bike and headed back to the College of The Bible to continue training for the ministry, thinking about my meeting with some of God’s children of Newmarket.
GORDON MOYES
