Page 2024 - Week 07 - Thursday, 13 August 2020
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For some reason, his life was spared and he spent the next 10 months in Stalag Luft III, arriving four months after the great escape that inspired the famous movie of the same name. Hunger and exposure haunted these months, but Alex was lifted by letters from Margery, his girlfriend and future wife, back in Victoria. Over 70 years later, he still has all her letters.
With the Russians closing in on the camp, Alex and his fellow POWs were marched out in midwinter, lacking adequate clothing and surviving on food rations that they had rolled into balls and kept for just such an occasion, as well as supplies that they obtained by bartering away cigarettes. Many of the men did not make it. They would simply fall asleep in the snow and never wake up.
Liberation came from the British Army, and Alex was taken to London in May 1945, arriving just after VE Day. The first thing he did was to write to Margery with a proposal of marriage.
Following the war, Alex studied psychology, taught, served as an education officer during the Korean War, and worked as a counselling psychologist at the University of Canberra. He is the last surviving member of the RAAF 451 Squadron.
I am personally grateful for good men and women like Alex. Our older Canberrans have built this nation and continue to build and strengthen this community. Alex’s daughter made it very clear to me that in her eyes his greatest achievement was as a dad. Alex has always had a great sense of humour, she told me, and it was one of the things that she loved most about him. Growing up, she always looked forward to dinnertime because that would be when her dad would make everyone laugh.
Congratulations, Alex, on a wonderful life, and thank you for all the sacrifices you have made, for your life’s work, and for raising up a wonderful family who adore you.
Mr and Mrs Darryl and Valma Cupitt—60th wedding anniversary
MS LAWDER (Brindabella) (6.36): I rise tonight to speak about an upcoming wedding anniversary of two of my constituents from Kambah, Darryl Cupitt and his wife, Valma. They were married on 15 October, but I wanted to take this opportunity to congratulate them on this momentous anniversary. They were married at St Barnabas Church, Fairfield, Sydney. It is difficult for them to be organising a 60th anniversary celebration during these interesting times that we are living in, but they will do their best to make arrangements over the coming weeks.
The family had three daughters and one son. Unfortunately, their son failed to survive open heart surgery aged eight, but all three of their daughters, five of their grandchildren and four of their six great-grandchildren live in Canberra.
I would like to congratulate Darryl Bryson Cupitt and Valma Anne Pickering on their 60th wedding anniversary and talk briefly about some of the things that may have been in the news at the time of their wedding in 1960.
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