Mar Varkey Vithayathil, Indian Syro-Malabar Catholic hierarch, Cardinal (from 2001), Major Archbishop of Ernakulam-Angamaly (from 1999) died he was , 83

Mar Varkey Vithayathil, C.SS.R.was an Indian cardinal, serving as Major Archbishop of Ernakulam-Angamaly and head of the Syro-Malabar Catholic Church died he was , 83. He was also a religious priest of the Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer.

(29 May 1927 – 1 April 2011)

Early life and ordination

Born to Justice Joseph Vithayathil (a member of the Travancore Legislative Assembly, a Judge of the High Court of Travancore-Cochin, a Chevalier,^[2] and a President of the All Kerala Catholic Congress) and Thresiamma Manadan in North Parur, Travancore, he became a member of the Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer (Redemptorists), a religious order founded by Saint Alphonsus Ligouri in 1732. He was ordained as a priest on 12 Jun. 1954. He wrote for a doctorate in canon law from the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas (Angelicum) in Rome on The Origin and Progress of the Syro-Malabar Hierarchy. He taught for 25 years at the Redemptorist seminary in Bangalore. In 1972 he took his Master's Degree in Philosophy from Karnataka University. He also taught different subjects in several other seminaries in Bangalore.

Provincial Superior

From 1978 to 1984 he was the Provincial Superior of the Redemptorist Provinces of India and Sri Lanka. Then, from 1984 to 1985 he was President of the India Conference of Religious. In 1990, he was appointed as the Apostolic Administrator of the Asirvanam Benedictine Monastery in Bangalore by Pope John Paul II.

Major Archbishop and Head of the Syro Malabar Church

He was appointed Apostolic Administrator of Ernakulam-Angamaly on 18 December 1996 and was consecrated Bishop on 6 January 1997. Pope John Paul II appointed him as the Major Archbishop of Ernakulam-Angamaly and Head of the Syro-Malabar Church, on 23 December 1999. In February 2008 he was elected President of the Catholic Bishops Conference of India ^[3] and held the presidency from 19 February 2008 to 3 March 2010.

Cardinal

Pope John Paul II nominated Mar Varkey Vithayathil a member of the Sacred College of Cardinals on 21 January 2001, and raised him to that dignity at the Consistory of 21 February 2001. He was one of the cardinal electors who participated in the 2005 papal conclave that elected Pope Benedict XVI.

Sacerdotal Golden jubilee

The sacerdotal golden jubilee of the Mar Varkey Vithayathil was celebrated under the auspices of the Syro-Malabar church on 8 November 2003. The jubilee was inaugurated on 12 June 2003 and was concluded on 12 June 2004.

Opinions

Fifth Marian dogma

Mar Varkey Vithayathil supported proposals to solemnly proclaim a fifth Marian dogma on the co-redemption and mediation of graces, saying it would be beneficial to the Church and that it would have positive ecumenical effects.^[4]

Death

On 1 April 2011, Mar Varkey Vithayathil died suddenly from a massive heart attack. He had suffered from prolonged heart problems for some time and died about 2:00 PM of sudden and irreversible cardiac arrest from the heart attack at Lisie Hospital in Ernakulam, where he had been hurriedly taken after fainting while celebrating Mass at noon at his chapel in the Major Archbishop's house, in Ernakulam.^[5] The funeral was held on 10 April 2011 at St. Mary's Cathedral Basilica, Ernakulam.^{[6] [7]}
Pope Benedict XVI sent a telegram of condolence, bestowing the Apostolic Blessing upon the faithful in mourning, to Bishop Puthur after learning of the Cardinal's death. He praised Cardinal Vithayathil for his work in support of the Syro-Malabar Church as well as the universal Church and in support of evangelization and ecumenism. Similar comments were made by the Mumbai Archbishop Oswald Gracias, who the President of the CBCI.

Works

• The Origin and Progress of the Syro-Malabar Hierarchy, Thesis, Angelicum, 1959. Published: Oriental Institute of Religious Studies, India, 1980.
• Straight From the Heart, autobiography and opinions in the form of an extended interview.

 

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Brynle Williams, Welsh activist (fuel protests) and politician, AM for North Wales (from 2003) died he was , 62.

Brynle Williams  was a North Wales Assembly Member (AM) for the Welsh Conservative Party in the National Assembly for Wales died he was , 62.. Elected from the North Wales Regional list, he was Shadow Minister for Rural Affairs from 2007-2011. Williams, who was a farmer from North Wales, was a colourful political figure who was respected for his straight talking and campaigning on rural issues; although privately he admitted he never saw himself as a politician. ^[1]
Williams rise to prominence began in 1997-98 when he joined protesters blockading the Port of Holyhead on Anglesey over the importation of Irish beef. ^[2] He later became a leader in the UK fuel protests in 2000. ^[3]

(9 January 1949 – 1 April 2011)

Political career

Williams was first elected to the Welsh Assembly on 1 May 2003 and was re-elected in 2007; serving until his death in 2011. He was Shadow Minister for Rural Affairs from 14 July 2007 and sat on the Sustainability ^[4], Rural Development ^[5], and Standards committees. ^[6]
Williams had also been the Conservative spokesman for Environment, Planning and Countryside and Local Government in the Second Assembly (2003-07), during which time he was Chair of the North Wales Regional Committee. During his time in the assembly he carved out a role as a champion of farming and rural affairs.

Personal life

Williams was born in Cilcain, Flintshire. He began farming at 15. As a sheep and cattle farmer, he was also an expert and an international judge of Welsh cobs (ponies). ^[7]
For more than 20 years, Williams was a member of the Livestock Committee of the Royal Welsh Agricultural Society that organises the Royal Welsh Show ^[8] In 2010, he realised a lifetime ambition when he was given the honour of judging the supreme champion at the RWS. ^[7] In total he missed only six Royal Welsh shows in 45 years.
Williams was also Chairman of Flintshire County Farmers Union of Wales for eight years, a lifetime member of the Welsh Pony and Cob Society ^[9] and President of the Denbighshire and Flintshire Agricultural Society. ^[7]
Brynle Williams died after being diagnosed with colon cancer in the summer of 2010. ^[10][1] Following the announcement of his death, First Minister Carwyn Jones said Mr Williams was "colourful" and a "tough battler". Welsh Conservative assembly leader Nick Bourne said he was "immensely popular" across all parties; and Prime Minister David Cameron called him a "straight talker and a great loss to the assembly and to Wales". He was married and had a son and daughter. ^[11]

 

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Harry Beckett, Barbadian-born British trumpeter and flugelhorn player, died from a stroke he was , 75

Harold Winston "Harry" Beckett was a British trumpeter and flugelhorn player died from a stroke he was , 75.

(30 May 1935 – 22 July 2010)

Biography

Coming into contact with the British modern-jazz scene for the first time in the early 1970s, I quickly realised that Beckett showed up everywhere – and that he was the kind of player you would always feel heartened to discover was on the stage. He brought a lightness and vivacity to everything he played, but a sinewy precision too – whether in the briefest vignette of a solo in the powerful, talent-packed ensembles of Mike Westbrook, Mike Gibbs, Chris McGregor or Graham Collier, or in the merciless free-fire zone of a cutting-edge small group such as that of the late saxophonist Mike Osborne.
Beckett made everybody's music sound better, without showing the slightest desire to draw attention to himself, and he sustained that balance all his life. Later in his career, Beckett became an inspiration and elder statesman to the late-1980s generation of young, black, jazz-playing Britons. When Courtney Pine, Gary Crosby and others conceived the Jazz Warriors big band in 1985, he was an automatic choice as player, composer and arranger.
If he might have seemed to represent the perennially dependable sidekick, Beckett was an independent force in his own right. His Caribbean roots audibly influenced original compositions that he revealed on his own records from 1970 onwards; his 1991 All Four One album featured an unusual four-flugelhorn lineup, and as late as 2008 he was relaxing into the most contemporary of mixed-idiom projects with the reggae and dance producer Adrian Sherwood, making The Modern Sound of Harry Beckett for Sherwood's On-U Sound label.
Beckett was born in St Michael parish, Barbados. He took up the cornet to play in a Salvation Army band, explored several other brass instruments, and moved to Britain aged 19, where he soon found work with the Jamaican bandleader Leslie "Jiver" Hutchinson's popular group. Beckett was also one of the demanding composer Charles Mingus's favourite recruits for the British band Mingus assembled to play his soundtrack for the 1961 jazz-and-reefers movie All Night Long.
Beckett joined Collier's group in 1961 and became his muse for the next 16 years. He was one of the most creative interpreters of the Englishman's softly shaded and gracefully crafted pieces. Beckett also confirmed his flexibility and employability in the mid-60s in the blues and R&B Nightimers group with the singer Herbie Goins.
Collier contributed to the writing for Beckett's debut album, Flare Up, a boppishly punchy yet typically lyrical 1970 session that also testified to Beckett's clout by featuring stars of the calibre of Osborne, John Surman, Alan Skidmore and John Taylor. The same group also made the equally colourful and engaging Warm Smiles and Themes for Fega albums in 1971 and 1972.
Those lyrical qualities that had endeared Beckett to Collier also worked for the raft of younger UK jazz composers who emerged from the all-night workshop-space of Ronnie Scott's original "Old Place" club in the 60s, and to the innovative South African coterie led by McGregor, which had arrived in London in the same period. Beckett began working with McGregor's thrilling townships-influenced Brotherhood of Breath; with the composer Westbrook; with the bands of Gibbs, Neil Ardley and John Warren; and even with the often fiercely abstract London Jazz Composers' Orchestra alongside such uncompromising improvisers as Evan Parker.
In small groups, Beckett partnered powerful soloists, including the saxophonist Surman and the groundbreaking guitarist Ray Russell; and from 1975 he became a regular member of a rejuvenated Stan Tracey's bands, and of groups led by the saxophonists Elton Dean and Kathy Stobart and by the great South African altoist Dudu Pukwana.
In the 1980s, Beckett became involved with the Jazz Warriors, and also with the Danish guitarist Pierre Dørge's Ellington-esque jazz-and-highlife New Jungle Orchestra. He collaborated on McGregor's Brotherhood of Breath reunion venture, Country Cooking, in 1988. In 1991, he made a series of duet recordings with the piano stars Keith Tippett, Joachim Kuhn and Django Bates for the Passion and Possession album, and formed his four-flugelhorn lineup with brassmen Chris Batchelor, Jon Corbett and Claude Deppa.




The next year, Beckett made the spare but evocative trio album Images of Clarity, his resourcefulness as an improviser getting a rare extended outing in the company only of the bassist Didier Levallet and the drummer Tony Marsh. He also participated in the Dedication Orchestra, a spectacular tribute to McGregor's Brotherhood of Breath, featuring some of the best musicians on the UK scene, in particular contributing a beautiful solo to Pukwana's Hug Pine on the band's 1992 album Spirits Rejoice. At the end of the 90s, he struck up a productive relationship with the saxophonist and clarinetist Chris Biscoe – an association that continued into the 21st century, not least in a three-year engagement with France's Orchestre National de Jazz.
Its contemporary grooves and dancefloor ambiance might have surprised the trumpeter's jazz-rooted fans, but The Modern Sound of Harry Beckett only reflected the warmth and curiosity that had characterised the Barbadian's open-handedness from the start. Beckett had worked with the dub and world-music star Jah Wobble over the years, and Wobble's connection with Sherwood always made the collaboration likely.
Beckett remained a legendary figure for the Jazz Warriors generation and for today's young jazz students (he taught trumpet and lectured extensively). He was brought onstage at the Barbican in London last month to join (somewhat unsteadily, but to audible admiration) Jason Yarde's Warriors tribute, as part of Guy Barker's Big Band Britannia venture.
The saxophonist and bandleader Trevor Watts was among those who paid tribute to Beckett: "He was a great player who found the key all musicians like us are looking for. The way to get it on every time he picked up the horn."

Discography

• Flare Up (Jazzprint, 1970) with John Surman, Mike Osborne, Alan Skidmore
• Memories of Bacares (Ogun, 1975) with Daryl Runswick
• Pictures of You (Virgin, 1985) with Elton Dean, Pete Sabberton, Mick Hutton, Tony Marsh, Tim Whitehead, Leroy Osborne
• Live, Vol. 2 (West Wind, 1987) with Chris McGregor, Courtney Pine, Clifford Jarvis
• Passion and Possesion (ITM, 1991) Duos with Django Bates, Joachim Kühn, Keith Tippett
• All Four One (Spotlite, 1991) with Jon Corbett, Claude Deppa
• Images of Clarity (Evidence, 1992) with Didier Levallet
• Before and After (Spotlite, 1999) with Chris Biscoe

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Tony Barrell, British-born Australian broadcaster and writer died he was , 70

Anthony "Tony" Barrell was an English writer and broadcaster who lived in Sydney, Australia died he was , 70. He produced several award-winning radio and television documentaries for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and the BBC World Service, usually with a focus on Asia and particularly Japan.

(7 May 1940 – 31 March 2011)

Early life

Barrell was born in Cheshire, England in 1940; both his parents and most of his family came from the Suffolk town of Stowmarket. His maternal grandmother, née Florence Laflin, had a family tree linking her through an unbroken line of agricultural labourers to the end of the sixteenth century.
He was brought up in the Welsh town of Mold in Flintshire and went to The King's School, Chester in 1951,^[2] and then Liverpool University from 1958–61, where he obtained a degree in economics. He was a student journalist and edited the literary magazine Sphinx. The magazine's covers were designed by Bill Harry who later edited Merseybeat. In Liverpool, thanks to a friendship with the London teenage pop poet Royston Ellis, he met George Harrison and Stuart Sutcliffe, the Beatle who was a promising young artist but died of a brain haemorrhage in Hamburg in 1962.

London years

Barrell moved to London in 1961 and lived for some years with Roger Deakin, author of Waterlog, in a flat they shared in Bayswater. He worked as a writer and researcher for Pathé Films from 1965 to 1969 and made journeys to shoot Pathe Pictorial in Morocco, Bermuda, Florida, New York and Hong Kong. In 1967, he met film designer Jane Norris and together they began visiting the Greek island of Lesbos. Norris started the design shop Ace Notions in Camden Town, London, which was later shared with the new wave fashion house Swanky Modes. Barrell co-wrote Superslave, a comic book for adults, with illustrator Bill Stair, which was published by Penguin Books in 1972. He also wrote a long profile of Captain Beefheart (Don van Vliet) for Zig Zag magazine, during his UK tour with the Magic Band in 1973.

Move to Sydney

Following the excesses of the Three-Day Week and the IRA bombing campaign of 1974 (and the birth of their daughter Klio), Barrell and Norris moved to Sydney where they lived together in the same house in Balmain. Barrell was hired by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) in 1975 to write and produce ideas and stories for their 'youth station' 2JJ (later Triple J). He and Graeme Bartlett developed the style of "cut up" radio shows through Sunday Afternoon at the Movies and Watching the Radio with the TV Off, both of which combined music and audio from sound tracks, comedy shows, mystery stories and contemporary pop (avant garde and mainstream) to create new narratives (a style that was later re-invented by ABC Radio National's Night Air program, which Barrell worked on toward the end of his career). Among those Barrell interviewed for Triple J were Brian Eno, Hunter S. Thompson, John Lydon (né Rotten), John Cale, and members of bands such as Madness, Wire and Cabaret Voltaire.
Barrell worked with Rick Tanaka for Triple J on The Nippi Rock Shop—a program on pop culture and politics of Japan—for thirteen years. People featured in the programme included The Yellow Magic Orchestra (Ryuichi Sakamoto, Haruomi Hosono and Yukihiro Takahashi), Sandii and Makoto of Sandii and the Sunsetz and other people from all walks of Japanese life. The pair also made a groundbreaking series of radio documentaries Japan's Other Voices for the ABC's Radio National network's Background Briefing program in 1984. Tony and Rick wrote articles for Australian Rolling Stone, Kyoto Journal and, for a while, were Sydney correspondents for the newsletter Tokyo Insider.

The 1980s

Barrell made a four-part radio documentary series in the UK in 1987. Two parts, Welcome to the Post-Industrial Museum and Militants on Merseyside, were about the industrial decline of Liverpool and the control of the city council by the Militant Tendency; and the other two were about the British press. The Wapping Truth was the story of the Wapping dispute that followed the relocation of News International papers from Fleet Street to Wapping, and Nothing Left to Read was an examination of the perceived bias of most British newspapers in favour of the government of Margaret Thatcher. The programmes included interviews with author Linda Melvern, Tony Benn MP and the then-editor of the New Statesman, John Lloyd.
In 1988, the last year of Ronald Reagan's presidency, Barrell toured the USA to make a five-part radio series Choice of America which visited Los Angeles, Houston, New Orleans, Boston, Washington and New York. Notable interviewees included John Kenneth Galbraith, Jim Garrison (the New Orleans attorney who was later the subject of Oliver Stone's JFK movie), and former New York City mayor John Lindsay. The second part of the series, What Happened to Houston, won an award at the New York Festival.
In 1989, Barrell won the Australian Writers' Guild award (known as an AWGIE)^[3] for radio for his play about the American poet Hart Crane, Lost at Sea. The play also featured the Japanese kabuki performer Danzo Ichikawa VII. Both Danzo and Crane committed suicide by jumping off ferry boats—and it explored ideas of synchronicity and the concept of 'dying at the right time' in the context of western and Japanese culture.
In 1989, Barrell was associate producer for the four-part ABC-KCET television documentary series Power in the Pacific, a survey of ongoing impact of the Pacific War and the Cold War in the Asia-Pacific. The series was filmed in Japan, China, South Korea, the Philippines (Manila and Cebu), the Marianas (Saipan), Papua-Nugini. The episode he directed, "Japan Comes First", also won a medal at the New York Festival in 1990 and the series was broadcast in Japan by NHK 2.

The 1990s

In 1993, Barrell produced a radio documentary, Cheers, about the Sydney Swans football team of which he was a passionate supporter.^[1]
In 1994, in the immediate aftermath of the genocidal massacres, Barrell travelled as field producer for ABC's Foreign Correspondent on assignment to Rwanda (with reporter Peter George).
In 1995, he visited Tokyo to record interviews for a feature to commemorate the 9–10 March 1945 bombing which destroyed much of the city with incendiary bombs and was, arguably, the first strategic use of napalm against civilians. The Tokyo's Burning feature broadcast by ABC Radio National's Radio Eye won the RAI special prize at the Prix Italia that year in Bologna.^[3] Barrell also produced the story of the atomic bombing of Nagasaki that year—Don't Forget Nagasaki won a UNAA (United Nations Association of Australia) Media Peace Prize for radio. The fire-bombing story was central to the book written with Rick Tanaka Higher than Heaven (published by Private Guy International).
In 1996, the two made a new kind of radio program, a survey of the world's cities still running trams or light rail systems. They invited citizens of Tallinn, Estonia, New Orleans, Nagasaki and Mainz in Germany to send cassettes of their rides on local trams. The result was broadcast in a feature by Radio Eye, but what made it different and special, was that it was accompanied by a dedicated website titled 'Trammit!', the wider story of light rail trams and street cars throughout the world. It was designed by Rick and Eddy Jokovich from ARMEDIA. Sadly, 'Trammit!' was removed in 2005, but it was probably a first of its kind (a radio show with a website), if not in the world, certainly in Australia. That same year Barrell and Rick Tanaka visited Okinawa to make more radio programs for the ABC and research their book Okinawa Dreams OK (published in 1997 by Die Gestalten Verlag, Berlin).^[4]
In 1997, Barrell visited the northern Japanese town of Maki in Niigata to record a story about the town's decision to vote against the siting of a genpatsu (nuclear power station) nearby, the first such referendum to successfully block a genpatsu. The story was broadcast by ABC Radio National's Indian Pacific program.

 2000 onwards

In 2000, Tony created (with sound engineer Russell Stapleton and researcher/translator Rick Tanaka) a major audio study of montage and collage, both visual and audio. It was broadcast by the ABC's Listening Room (now defunct). The ABC website carries Must You See the Joins?, an illustrated article about the great collagists including the veteran Japanese artist Kimura Tsuneihisa who celebrated his 80th birthday in 2008.^[5]
In 2000, Barrell was commissioned to produce a one-off report for the ABC TV's leading currents affairs program Four Corners, a study of how the service industries have grown and changed Australia's working life. "The Business of Change"^[6] was shot in Sydney and included scenes at the now-defunct One.Tel telco, interviews with life coaches, dog walkers and other 'new' professions.
In 2002, Barrell's Japan expertise earned him a commission to present the BBC World Service co-production (with the ABC) of six radio documentaries broadcast in the run up to the 2002 FIFA World Cup held in South Korea and Japan in May 2002.^[7] A feature about the older parts of Tokyo, called What Tokyo, shared the 2004 Prix Marulic, awarded at the annual drama and documentary festival sponsored by Croatian radio—HRTV—on the island of Hvar.
Also in 2003, BBC World Service and ABC sent Tony to Singapore, Vietnam and Okinawa for a series about the effect of Chinese and Confucian values in the Asian region. The Okinawa program, Live Slow Live Long, focussed on the island peoples' claim to be the oldest in the world, and included interviews with a centenarian who said the secret of her longevity was to work every day, sleep every day, eat plenty of Okinawa's national dish chanpurū (which includes pork and 'bitter melon' known in Okinawa as goya) and take a little awamori, Okinawa's own drink distilled from Thai sweet rice.^[8] Barrell made a third series for these two broadcasting networks in 2004 when he visited the Russian Far East—Sakhalin island, Vladivostok and Khabarovsk. In 2005 his book of the series The Real Far East was published by the independent Melbourne company Scribe. In 2006, Barrell presented Rice Bowl Tales, a fourth series for the BBC and Radio National about the rice cultures of Asia.^[9]
Barrell was working with his wife on a DVD film about their many visits to Molivos, Lesbos and a book on the same subject. He retired from full-time employment with the ABC in May 2008, and had hoped to complete work on his own story—Your Island My Island—in 2009. He died on 31 March 2011 of an apparent heart attack.^[10]

 

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Claudia Heill,, Austrian judoka, silver medalist at the 2004 Summer Olympics, died from suspected suicide she was 29.

Claudia Heill was an Austrian judoka best known for winning the silver medal in the half-middleweight (63 kg) division at the 2004 Summer Olympics died from suspected suicide she was  29..

(24 January 1982 – 31 March 2011)

 She also won silver medals at the European championship in 2001 and 2005 and bronze medals in 2002, 2003 and 2007. She placed fifth at the 2008 Summer Olympics and retired one year later. After retiring from competition she began coaching junior judoka. On 31 March 2011, she died by falling out of a sixth story window in Vienna.^[2] It is not known whether it was an accident^[3] or suicide.

 

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Gil Clancy, American Hall of Fame boxing trainer died he was , 88.

Gilbert Thomas "Gil" Clancy was a Hall of Fame boxing trainer and one of the most noted boxing commentators of the 1980s and 1990s.

(May 30, 1922 – March 31, 2011)



He worked with such famous boxers as Muhammad Ali, Joe Frazier,^[2] and George Foreman,^[3] as well as Gerry Cooney in his fight with Foreman. In the 1990s, he worked with Oscar De La Hoya, coming out of retirement to do so.^[4] Another fighter whom Clancy trained was Emile Griffith. Clancy was Griffith's first and only trainer and guided him to world championships in the welterweight and middleweight classes.^[2] Clancy is a member of the International Boxing Hall of Fame.^[2] In 1983, he won the Sam Taub Award for excellence in boxing broadcasting journalism.^[5]
As a broadcaster, he worked for CBS and HBO and was ringside for the famous "No Mas" fight between Roberto Duran and Sugar Ray Leonard.
Clancy and his wife, Nancy, had six children and several grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

 

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Alan Fitzgerald, Australian journalist, died from cancer he was , 75.

Alan John Fitzgerald was an Australian author and journalist, best known for his satire relating to Canberra and Federal politics died from cancer he was , 75..

(1935 – 31 March 2011) 

Fitzgerald arrived in Canberra in 1964 from Fiji where he had gone to join The Fiji Times, then owned by Pacific Publications, Sydney. However, he was also invited by editor, John Douglas Pringle, to write satirical columns for The Canberra Times, having met Pringle in London some years earlier. He later broadened his opinion pieces, writing for The Sun-Herald, The Sunday Observer, The Sunday Australian, The Bulletin, The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age. Alan Fitzgerald also became a correspondent for CBC, Ottawa, in 1974 and as well conducted his own current affairs program for 9 years on Canberra radio station 2CA. He was also a frequent contributor to ABC radio programs and made regular appearances on Channel Seven's breakfast program.
In 1967 he was elected to the ACT Advisory Council as a 'True Whig' on a joke platform of promising to do nothing. He was re-elected in 1970 with 21 per cent of the vote, ahead of the Liberal Party candidates and second only to the ALP team. For many years, he was a member and chairman of the ACT Historic Sites and Building Committee (now Heritage Council) that had been established at his initiative to protect historic homesteads and buildings at a time of rapid expansion of Canberra into the surrounding rural area. The Committee prevented the development of a suburb within the Lanyon Homestead site and recommended the acquisition and management of Calthorpes House in Mugga Way as a home museum.
Alan became seriously involved in politics when he stood for the Australia Party (founder Gordon Barton) as its candidate in the May, 1970 by-election for the House of Representatives seat of Canberra. He gained the highest vote of any Australia Party candidate in any election but was eliminated from the count in a final distribution of preferences. He stood again for the Australia Party for the seat in the 1972 Federal election.
He was elected President of the National Press Club for two terms 1969–70 and 1970–71 and remained on the committee for many years.
Alan Fitzgerald graduated from the Australian National University with a Bachelor of Arts degree (English and Political Science).
He joined the National Capital Development Commission and became its Director of Public Information and after its abolition in 1989, transferred in the same position to its weak successor, the National Capital Planning Authority.
He became a member of the Federal Parliamentary Press Gallery and published a conservative magazine, The Australian National Review for five years and also established The Australian Constitutional News.
He was a foundation member and chairman of the ACT & Region branch of Australians for Constitutional Monarchy and played an active role in the debate about Australia becoming a republic. In 1998 he was the organisations primary candidate in the election of delegates to the Constitutional Convention but lost on a final distribution of preferences to the ARM candidate, Frank Cassidy. However, he attended the Convention as an alternative delegate and media officer for ACM and a number of Independent delegates.
He lived in the Canberra suburb of Isaacs with his wife, Maria, and had six grandsons. He previously lived at Farrer and Hughes with their two sons, Dominic and Julian. Dr Dominic Fitzgerald is now Associate Professor and a respiratory physician at the Children's Hospital, Westmead, Sydney while Julian Fitzgerald is a member of the Parliamentary Press Gallery, Canberra, and author of two books, "Lobbying in Australia" and "Inside the Parliamentary Press Gallery - Seeing Beyond the Spin".
Fitzgerald died of cancer on 31 March 2011 at the age of 75.^[1]

Bibliography

• Fitzgerald's Canberra: A Guide to Life in the National Capital (Dalton Publishing; 1969, 1970 and 1971) ISBN 0-909906-00-9
• The Best of Fitzgerald (Dalton Publishing; 1970)
• Old Fitz's Unparliamentary Handbook (Clareville Press; 1976)
• Historic Canberra, 1825-1945 (Australian Government Publishing; 1977)
• Italian Farming Soldiers: PoWs in Australia, 1941-47 (Melbourne University Press; 1981)
• Alan Fitzgerald's Canberra with cartoons by George Molnar (Clareville Press; 1983)
• Canberra's Engineering Heritage (editor; Clareville Press; 1983)
• Canberra and the New Parliament House (Lansdowne Press; 1983)
• Canberra in Two Centuries – A Pictorial History (Clareville Press; 1987)
• Victory: 1945, War & Peace (Gore & Osment/Australian War Memorial; 1995)
• Barons, Rebels & Romantics – The Fitzgeralds' First Thousand Years (Clareville Press; 2004)
• The Italian Farming Soldiers (revised editions; Clareville Press; 1999, 2007)

 

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