John had written some autobiographical stories about his life over the past few years and the family were able to draw on this in putting together some of the details of his early life.

CHILDHOOD

John was born in Richmond NSW on 20th August 1925 - so he would have turned 80 this month. He was the third child and second son of John Cawthorn Warth and Florence Thompson. The children were Edith, Bill, John and Meg. John reports that his mother walked herself to the hospital in labour.

His Dad worked for the NSW Railways and much of his childhood was spent in a variety of places in country NSW including Walcha Road, Muswellbrook, Tamworth, Murrurundi and Cootamundra. More recently, he returned to some of those places to look at where they had lived and became reacquainted with some people from his schooldays.

At Cootamundra his daily task was to milk the cow. When he was sent away to Hurlstone Agricultural High School to board in his first year of high school, he won the milking competition, milking 21 cows in one hour.

The family railway connection continued on after school as John became an apprentice electrician and moved to Sydney. He was a talented young apprentice and earned the nickname "Argus the Boy Wonder" with his skills in fixing faults in electrical systems.

TRAINS

Although the majority of his working life took him away from the railways, he never lost his love of trains. When visiting (daughter) Kathy in Brisbane, he would always prefer to catch the train. He took himself to Darwin on the Ghan just recently - he believed that they should have built the Alice Springs to Darwin Line years ago. Since moving to Sydney he had joined a group of retired railway engineers, some of whom remembered him from his railway days and he had recently booked a trip with them to Dubbo for this coming October.

MARRIED LIFE

John met his wife, Lucille at a Youth Group at St Albans Anglican Church, Epping in about 1946 and they were married in St Albans on 23rd April 1949, with his brother Bill as Best Man. He used to tell the story that the worst haircut he ever got was the one for his wedding. Having told the Barber that he was getting married, they got chatting and the Barber reportedly didn't pay enough attention to the task at hand.

They set off on their honeymoon to Noosa, travelling there by plane, returning on the train, but with nowhere to live set-up. His mother organised a holiday flat at Manly while they were away. They moved from there to Pennant Hills and eventually to Orange, where their two daughters were born, Susan in 1951 and Kathy, two years later. Susan remembers that for years he carried in his wallet a small sepia photo of her sitting on a tricycle in the snow. He also tried skiing on Mt Conobolas.

NEWCASTLE & LAMBTON

Securing a job with the Electricity Commission of NSW, the family moved to Newcastle at the end of 1954, and built a pre-fabricated home of a little over 10 squares in Fourth St, North Lambton. Over the years, John did a lot of work on the house, from polishing the wooden floors before they eventually got carpet, to painting and finally recladding the whole property in Hardiplank. He built a lot of the early furniture, including the kitchen table and the ironing board. A garage and workshop came a few years later.

It was here that the final addition to the family came when Philip was born in 1956.

The job took John away from home with lots of driving up the Hunter Valley. By the time he had finished his career he had logged an extraordinary number of kilometres in work vehicles and taught the two girls to drive.

Although John was deeply involved in his career as an electrical technician, there were some things that he either misrecognised or failed to embrace. The first was when Susan wanted to buy a Phillips compact cassette player following her first school holiday job. He advised her that the new fandangled device was just a passing fad and that she had better buy a reel-to-reel tape player. Well she probably bought the last player in the country as the cassette boom took off. The other was the personal computer. Even though he loved to build electronic kits he thought nobody would ever use a PC. Instead he built amplifiers, radios and anything to do with model trains.

The model trains stayed with John throughout his adult life, even taking over the family garage for a number of years. It was finally sold when they moved to Canberra.

It was during the time in Newcastle that Father became a Lay Reader in the Lambton parish. On Sunday morning, he'd load the girls onto his bicycle, one sitting on a piece of wood attached to the handle bars and another on the crossbar to get to Sunday school at Lambton. In the evening, all three would walk together to Jesmond, where John officiated at Sung Evensong, one of his favourite services. Dressed in his robes made by Lucille, this is one of the early memories of his children who both admired his voice and absorbed his love of singing.

As Superintendent of the Sunday School, the annual picnic was a large affair - though he said he sometimes felt he was doing a “loaves and fishes” as many more families turned up for the picnic than had booked. It was at the picnic that the children had their first taste of egg and spoon and sack races.

For a while he also acted as a volunteer driver for the Bishop of Newcastle.

CANBERRA

After the three children made an exodus for ANU, the parents decided to follow and move to Canberra. The move was not without some trials and tribulations, finding new employment mid-career. But they both landed jobs, with John starting at the Dept of Science working for the American institution NASA. With Lucille, he built their dream home in Wanniassa.

Working at NASA was undoubtedly the high point in John’s working life, so much so that you will all remember the ubiquitous jacket with NASA patch and blue NASA necktie. He was wearing it in the photo as you entered, taken on Lucille’s 80th birthday, just 6 days before his stroke. But the NASA job entailed shift work and when the position finally was closed he was relieved to go back to normal hours.

CYCLING

Canberra saw lots of fresh starts. Besides the obvious in employment and housing, John took up competitive cycling. He had been an avid rider in his younger days so with great gusto charged into the scene of the Canberra Veterans with lots of energy. The cycling provided an outlet for new friendships and kept him fit to boot. But it also became his undoing when a car collided with him with full force during a training run and smashed both his knees.

Though his knees never quite fully recovered from this accident and troubled him for the rest of his life, he only gave up cycling in the last two years of his life and continued to walk to the end.

RETIREMENT

After a short stint at the Department of Defence, he retired in 1985. Besides the cycling, John joined a local Singing For Pleasure choir group and the Canberra Men’s Choir.

John also took on the job of maintaining Susan’s garden, besides his own. The garden flourished as his little grandson Christopher helped grand-dad about the yard.

TRAVEL

During retirement, John travelled extensively on the NSW railways.

He revisited many of the places where he grew up and had a fascination with the country towns and old folks he met along the way. He even went in search of old school friends and surprisingly found many still living in the same town they grew up in.

He relished in the planning of these adventurers, making daily schedules down to the very last detail. The same went for his long distance cycling trips in which he embarked on journeys that fellows many years his junior would not attempt.

And he also made a few memorable overseas trips to either visit relatives in England, his son living in Japan or Los Angeles, or for pleasure trips around the US with Lucille.

MOVE TO SYDNEY

John and Lucille remained in Canberra long after the children had left. Kathy shifted to Brisbane in 1977 and Philip left Canberra after university the next year, eventually settling in Los Angeles in 1993 after many years living in Japan.

Susan, who had started the family exodus to Canberra, left with her family at the beginning of 1992.

In about 1999, the idea of moving to be closer to Susan or Kathy began to be discussed. The prospect for this crystallised in 2000 when a house adjacent to Sue and John came on the market. They finally moved to Sydney in August 2002.

For John this enabled a range of medical supports to be improved, including a pacemaker just before Christmas that year. Despite an initial reluctance to make the move, he grew to appreciate the closer contact with his family.

Final Days

On Sunday morning 24th July John suffered a massive stroke, and spent the final week of his life in Royal North Shore Hospital. Initially he was able to respond with a strong grip of his right hand and maintain some awareness of his family members sitting by his bedside. This gave time for bedside singing which later moved into quieter CD music. The family and medical staff were amazed at how he hung on, still alive when John and Christopher arrived from London on Friday morning - perhaps he was trying his best to be there for Philip. He finally passed away at 3:15am Sunday 31st July.