In the Australian Spring, just fifteen months after the assassination that triggered the World War I, Patricia (Pat) Monaghan was born on the twenty ninth of August, 1920. Her parents were Florence and Charles West and she grew up with her three brothers (Morris, Des, and Frank) and two sisters (June and Noelle) in the south-eastern suburbs of Melbourne. A bright, pretty child, her world was forever changed after her father's death when she was only twelve years old.
Pat did well at school, though she was feisty and forthright and this got her into trouble sometimes with the Sisters. In her Merit Year (Grade 8) she won the Religion Prize and two scholarships to continue her secondary schooling at Presentation Convent Windsor. However, the Great Depression and later her father's death meant that uniforms, books, and the expenses of a secondary education were impossible. Moreover, her family needed her financial help to survive. So at 14, she was apprenticed to a hairdresser in Toorak, Melbourne's fashionable suburb, where wealth is still screened by walls and gracious gardens and where one finds the hub of fashionable society. She applied herself to her craft and became an excellent hairdresser and an expert cutter. She is still doing friends' hair at 88.
In her late teens, Pat met Cyril Monaghan, some years her senior. They were married when she was twenty and set up housekeeping in Essendon. They had five children, four girls (Kim, Gail, Robyn and Kerry) and a boy (Michael). In 1952, they moved from their small flat to a larger home, though still in Essendon. Cyril's business had prospered and they were able to give their children the complete secondary education that neither parent had had themselves. Like many Irish-Australians of their generation, they prized education all the more for leaving school early and Cyril was determined to keep his children at school for as long as possible. Pat continued to excel at sports. She learnt golf and became a champion. She and her husband were compassionate people and while Cyril made his contributions through clubs and boards, Pat took people under her wing at a very personal level. She has a great gift for life long friendships for she is blind to ethnic and class distinctions.
As their family grew up, Pat and Cyril spent more and more time living by the beach. Their holiday home became their permanent home and they took up lawn bowls as well as golf. Both excelled and played pennant for their club. Every holiday their grandchildren spent time with them and they all treasure memories of those times together. Pat was involved with her parish community in everything from cleaning the church and doing the flowers to driving sick parishioners to medical appointments and being part of a prayer tree.
Pat and Cyril both loved gardening. It was Pat's greatest love outside of her family. At their home on the Mornington Peninsula, she created a beautiful garden, whilst Cyril cultivated a magnificent vegetable garden. Their flowers and produce graced the tables of everyone they knew. Pat and Cyril didn't retire until late in life. Cyril worked part-time into his early eighties, and Pat had plenty to keep her busy with her family, the garden and her bowls club.
Pat and Cyril spent their the years after their late retirement living by the beach. Both hospitable and friendly, they had active lives until Cyril developed leukemia. Pat nursed him at home until it became physically impossible for her to do so, and visited him daily once he moved into a nursing home. After he died aged 84, in 1994, Pat moved into a smaller home unit. More recently, still well and active, Pat moved to Brighton, another beach side suburb, but close to Melbourne and nearer her family. There she lives in a Retirement Community close to her sister, June, and her brother, Frank.
Pat is now the matriarch of a family that includes fourteen great-grandchildren with two more on the way. In these yearsshe has taken up pastel drawing, and her artworks are prized by her children and grandchildren. This Trust was launched at her eighty-eighth birthday celebrations and we think she'll still be around to see her first graduates!