Vale Ray Holden

Federation Life Member Ray Holden always regarded himself as a rank and file activist in Federation — and was proud of it. He died in the last week of October, aged in his early 90s.

Ray was born in 1927 and after leaving school at 15 to join the railways as a tradesman, he worked for 15 years with the Railways Department.

He was encouraged by an advertisement in The Sydney Morning Herald to retrain as a teacher in 1959. Ray did the one year Artisans Certificate at Sydney Teachers College and began teaching at East Hills Boys High in 1960.

Ray immediately became an active member of the Manual Arts Teachers Association when the union had sectional associations. He was instrumental in setting up the Industrial Arts Special Interest Group when Federation moved to geographically based associations. The SIG still meets to this day.

Ray was active in the Industrial Arts class-sizes campaign for reduced class sizes for practical lessons.

He was allocated to Canterbury-Bankstown Teachers Association when geographically based associations came into being. He was active at the Association level, was Fed Rep and President of East Hills Boys High and then transferred to Picnic Point High, where he became active in the Sutherland Association.

He was made Life Member of Sutherland Association and a delegate for that association at Annual Conference for 20 years.

Ray was awarded Life membership of Federation in 1980.

This obituary is based on the condolence speech given by General Secretary John Dixon at November Council.