Ernie”s class struggles

Andrew Mathieson
WORKINGclass Ernie Speight has never looked at books the same since a chance meeting with his wifetobe Marion at a dance back in wartime Britain.
The 79yearold was the son of illiterate parents who worked hard but also understood the value of a good education.
But it was Marion who later taught Ernie a valuable lesson.
The debonair soldier had helped her fight off the advances of a persistent drunk one night.
She accepted Ernie’s invitation to dance and later agreed to go out with him.
Marion was different, however, being born into money.
Her grandfather owned several properties in Middlesbrough and the family ran a dance academy at the top of their twostorey mansion.
“I couldn’t believe my luck when I first went down and I saw this real big house,” Ernie recalls, with his strong accent still intact.
Ernie had worked in a dirty foundry from age 13.
He grew up in the slums of Tilery, a highly industrial part of Durham.
In an age when the classes rarely mixed socially, he was puzzled to Marion’s motivation behind dating a battler.
“Bloody hell, you come from such a good background – why did you have anything to do with me?” Ernie asked.
Marion just grinned.
“You don’t judge a book by its cover,” she replied.
They were words that reverberated throughout his life until Marion’s passing last year after a long illness.
But she certainly has not been forgotten.
Gordon Institute of TAFE has named a scholarship in both Marion and Ernie’s honour this year for their 20 years of financially supporting disadvantaged students.
The Grovedale pensioner retired from administering the institute’s student fund at the end of last year but admits to still organising a few raffles.
“I still wished she was alive to see this but I probably wouldn’t have retired – she was my backbone,” Ernie sighs.
The couple married in 1950, four years after that fateful dance.
Ernie, however, was stationed in Palestine, Egypt and Greece from late 1946 until early 1948.
Marion waited patiently.
They immigrated to Australia with their three children in 1965.
After a year in Whyalla working for Alcoa, the family accepted a transfer to Geelong.
Marion always backed the underdog and they were involved in many stoushes together.
Ernie stood up to insurance bullies for the union at International Harvester.
The compensation officer discovered they doorknocked the homes of injured workers.
Many accepted quick cash grabs well below the true value of claims.
“The chaps were desperate,” Ernie confesses.
“They were grabbing it and I thought it had to stop.
“A lot of them were migrants who could hardly speak English.”
Five years after the heartbreaking demise of International Harvester in 1982, a credit society informed Ernie that its workers’ fighting fund was worth $1600.
“A few of the blokes suggested a night out (with the money),” Ernie tells.
“I said ‘A night out? There’s 700 of us – we’ll be twopot screamers’.”
No, Marion insisted, there were students out there short of a dollar.
Ernie also had great empathy for them after returning to the classroom in 1983 for a Gordon hospitality course.
The student fund has invested ongoing donations and is now worth about $175,000.
By 1998, interest from the capital had helped the fund’s 100th student.
Now it has delivered grants to more than 2000.
“Some of these kids come in for the price of a hamburger or the cost of a bus fare,” Ernie cries out.