Margaret was the eldest of seven children born to Eddie Clarke and Bernie Clarke (nee Ryan). She was born on 7 February 1939 in Innisfail Queensland. Eddie was a career State Public Servant who took his country postings as they were made available. He advanced through the ranks of the department dealing with employment and industrial affairs. After serving for a number of years as the Registrar of the State Industrial Commission he was appointed as an Industrial Commissioner. After some 15 years there he retired and lived on in retirement until his death in 1998 at age 91 years.

 

 

Bernie was christened Gertrude but never used the name. She, like her husband, was born and raised in Rockhampton. She attended the Range Convent up until the end of year 10 – Junior as it was then called. One of her best friends was a Veronica Doherty, later to marry Fred O’Rourke and have six children, one of whom was Vince who would become Margaret’s husband. Bernie’s life revolves around family and at 94 she still resides in the family home at Moorooka.

 

 

Margaret was Christened Margaret Mary. Bernadette was the name she chose for her confirmation at about age 12. Her three brothers are named Denis, Francis and Bernard. Denis became a geologist in which field he holds a doctorate. He lives in Sydney with wife Pamela. They have three children. Francis, whom Margaret called ‘Mickey’ most of her life, is a professor at Griffiths University. He also has his doctorate, is married to Olga and has three sons who also reside at Moorooka. Bernard is a bachelor living in his own home in Moorooka. He is a barrister.

 

 

Margaret’s sisters are Mary, Ann and Helen. Mary married Les Pratt and has four children. Ann married Neville Wilkinson who died a number of years ago from cancer. They had three children. Helen has never married and lives at Coorparoo. She is a primary school teacher.

 

 

As was the custom in many Irish/Australian Catholic families of their time, the eldest girl was encouraged to go out to work to help support the family and ensure the boys in particular gained a higher education. Margaret finished year 10 doing exceptionally well in the Junior Public Examination. She was offered a scholarship to take up teaching. It was a case of take that or go out to work. She chose to go to work as teaching held no attraction for her. So at age 16 she entered the Commonwealth Bank.

 

Margaret was one of the original personnel at the newly opened branch at Mt Gravatt in about 1958-9. She held No.3 passbook until she closed the account in the 1980s. To take up the position she travelled to Brisbane and stayed for a time with the O’Rourke family who were living at Greenslopes. A young 16 year old boy, Vince, thought from afar that she was a beautiful young lady. Margaret later revealed that she did not give him a second look.

 

 

 Margaret spent her working life in the bank. After many years she moved to the Reserve Bank and advanced there too.

 

Margaret was not a very active sports person. She did enjoy a game of tennis on rare occasions. She rather developed her talents in sewing and tatting. She had a passion for music and was accomplished as a pianist. Her three daughters would all learn to play the piano. The second-hand Wertheim piano, which Margaret purchased before she was married, now holds pride of place in the home of her daughter Megan. She also loved singing. She was an active member of the Brisbane Girls Choir that performed regularly in the City Hall in the 1960s. She sang at her sister Mary’s wedding and always joined the local church choir dragging her husband, Vince, with her. Her love was for operatic sopranos and tenors.

 

 

Another of Margaret’s loves was ballroom dancing. Before her wedding she was a regular at Brisbane’s Cloudland. She met and dated a number of young men over the years but none of the relationships really flourished. To be 25 and unmarried in the 1950s and 1960s was thought to be strange and at times Margaret thought that everyone believed she would be left on the shelf. Vince rather chose to believe she was being saved for him.

 

 

Margaret had a number of strong friendships with girls of her own age. One, Mary Hayes, was to die not long after she was married and her death upset Margaret deeply. With these friends she went on a number of long journeys for holidays. They drove to the Atherton Tableland in an old Austin A40. She took a train trip to Perth and back and, of course, there was the boat voyage and the like. Throughout her life she exchanged birthday and Christmas cards with Mary Crowley (nee Nelson).

 

 

Margaret had a great love of reading. This would stay with her throughout her life until her Alzheimer’s disease took that gift from her early in its life. She particularly loved historical works. Her vocabulary was very extensive and her spelling ability made her the living dictionary and thesaurus for her family. She would proof read all the essays written by her daughters for school and all the numerous speeches Vince would need to give in his working life.

 

 

In 1964 Margaret agreed to be engaged to Vince O’Rourke who had recently returned to Australia from several years studying for the priesthood in the United States. Vince’s American twang was what attracted Margaret in the first place, or so she would say. Their twelve month engagement was spent separated. Vince had been appointed to teach at the State High at Cunnamulla in Queensland. They communicated by letter almost every day during this time. Vince would make many journeys home for the weekends also even though the car took a battering. Prior to their wedding day on 11 December 1965 Margaret made Vince burn all the letters she had written and then promised she would do the same with his. Many years later Vince would find the letters neatly bundled in a shoe box. She would never let the prying eyes of her three daughters access them.

 

Margaret’s wedding was held in St James Catholic Church at Coorparoo. The reception was at the RSL Hall at Holland Park. It was a wet and hot steamy day and the beer ran out before the guests sat down to eat. Part of their money set aside for the honeymoon had to be spent to supplement the drinks. The newlyweds honeymooned at Noosa on the Sunshine Coast. The nearest Catholic Church was then at Nambour so Margaret and Vince went there to Mass on the Sunday. The parish priest gave a sermon on, of all things, ‘the good wife’. In his sermon he said that the good wife ‘should always be frugal but not mean’. That stuck a cord with Margaret and became a guiding principle which she tried to pass on to her daughters

 

 

Margaret and Vince first settled in the town of Ipswich where Vince had a teaching position at Ipswich State High. For the first month they resided in a corner room of the Palais Royal Hotel in Brisbane Street. Friday and Saturday nights were the times when the local hoons would race their cars from the Post Office to the Palais Royal corner and then the circuit back to the Post Office. Little sleep was had on those nights. Margaret would fill in her day by walking around the shops as Vince needed the car to get to school.

 

Though Margaret would have wished to enter the workforce the banks at that time would not employ women who were married. Eventually they established their first home in the suburb of Silkstone. It was fully furnished which was a godsend because the only deposit they had was the 800 pounds or $1600 Margaret had saved. Some of that was used to pay for the wedding however. Vince had brought to the marriage some promise and a debt on a car. Their first child, Maree, was born at the Ipswich Hospital in January 1967. The birth had not been easy.

 

 

In the early years of her marriage Margaret had control of the family budget. She and Vince shared everything. There was never any thought of having separate accounts and expenditure was a joint decision. The budget was extremely tight. When Margaret and Vince went to the movies once a month, they did not have a TV for a year or so, they would slip out at interval to the car and have a piece of boiled fruit cake and a cordial Margaret had made up for them. The budget did not allow for purchases from the canteen. Margaret’s sewing skills were used to clothe herself and later on her daughters. A major cost was the travelling to Brisbane each weekend to visit with the grandparents after Maree’s birth.

 

 

In August 1968 the little family moved to Brisbane. Vince was now teaching at Villanova College, Coorparoo and Margaret was expecting another child. After looking through at least fifty homes Margaret fell in love with the home at 33 Devon Street Annerley. It was on the market for $13500 and with a secondary loan from Margaret’s father it was purchased.

 

 

Margaret’s second daughter, Megan, was born in March 1969. It was to be another four years before the third child, Anne, was born. Although Margaret always claimed she would have loved to have had a boy the smile on her face when each daughter was born said it all. All three have graced both our lives.

 

Margaret relished her role as mother. She dedicated her life to support for all members, particularly Vince. Whatever he wished to do in his career she was there to encourage. To complain was not part of her way of living. She stood back while Vince continued with his study. He completed six degrees at various levels, mostly as an evening student. Only when he had completed his qualifications did she move to re-enter the world of the student. She completed her senior or year 12 and then took herself off to the University of Queensland. She was a great role model for the girls as she had a tremendous work ethic. Invariably she would gain full marks for every assignment. She and Megan graduated with their BA in the same year 1991. All three girls are university graduates.

 

 

In 1983 Vince was appointed as the first lay Director of catholic education for the Archdiocese of Brisbane. It was important to make a statement about their lay status so Margaret accompanied Vince on every formal occasion requiring his presence. Margaret was an introvert by nature so such occasions were a drain on her, but she carried out her role with great dignity. Her gentleness and civility made her a great asset.

 

 

Margaret got to travel a fair deal with Vince. Apart from conferences across the country they got to visit South Africa, Zimbabwe, Thailand, England, Scotland, Ireland, Parts of Europe, Mexico, Canada and The United States. Most note worthy was the 8 months living in San Antonio, Texas. Vince had been advised to complete a Masters Degree in Theology and the family accompanied him. All members of the family were students for a time at St Mary’s University in that city. She met with many world renowned educational leaders and some politicians over the years. It was during Vince’s final sabbatical in 1997 that the first indications of what was to be eventually diagnosed as Alzheimer’s disease showed themselves.

 

 

Early in 1999 doctors diagnosed Alzheimer’s disease for Margaret. She was 59 at that time. The disease grew so rapidly that she never really got to enjoy her five grandchildren as her family and close friends know she would have wanted to.

 

 

Margaret was always a gentle woman. Friends would often wonder how in God’s name Vince ended up with one so calm. What she kept hidden from all but her closest friends and family was her wacky sense of humour. When the mood took her, and we all thought it was usually around the full moon, she would have us in fits of laughter. She would usually end up telling us she was embarrassed for being such ‘a fool’. She was a great judge of people and Vince often was thankful for her insights. She was a person of deep religious faith. At various times she served in the church as reader, chorister and Eucharistic minister. With Vince she spent many years helping to prepare young couples for marriage. Together they made a tape on the place of communication in marriage which was then used by parish priests.

 

This keyhole into Margaret's life might best be wound up by quoting some passages from a note Vince wrote to Margaret in early 1994. He was at a conference and when he had left home Margaret had not been well. He thought that this note had long been destroyed but found it when preparing for Margaret to enter a nursing home.

 

 

“Today I tried to pray, a prayer of thanks for the great gifts in my life, you above all and our girls. I could see your face of today. I could not get it out of my mind. You looked so frail, so pale, and almost sad. Yet you had had thoughts and actions only for me. I felt ashamed that I can so often be so intent upon myself and the world of work that I miss the signs from those so important to me.

I have an urge to write and so I do. I used to love to write to you and now that avenue of communication lies dormant. Through words at least I wish to reach out to you, to hold you to me, to tell you once again, as I did an age ago now, how much I love you, how beautiful you are in my eyes, how much my life revolves around you and without whom my life and all that I do would seem so empty.

I have a feeling of oneness with you, a sense that my completeness comes through that oneness which is part of me at all times, although I do not often refer to it, nor am I overtly conscious of it.

 

I wish to go to bed having said to you my Margaret Mary that I truly love you, miss you, and respect you and thank you for your love and care of me no matter how you are feeling. I am one most blest. You and the girls will loom large in my prayers and thoughts over the next few days.

I am humbled by the deep effect you have had on my formation. Through you I have come to know and appreciate God in a new way, a deeper more meaningful way, a relational way. My most loved wife, no one person has had so deep an impact upon me. I have watched you selflessly care for me and the kids and seldom complain because of the lack of genuine thanks. Since it comes so irregularly I want tonight to say thanks to you for your tolerance, patience, ability to overlook my faults and accept me as I am here and now. I pray that we have a long life together without much pain. I can’t stand the thought of you in pain yet I know you suffer every day. I cannot imagine a life after death without you. That would be cruel, an eternal cruelty, which a loving god could not abide.”