FAMILY, friends and well-wishers at the University of Newcastle on Wednesday remembered the texture and scope of the life of the former chancellor, Conjoint Professor Trevor Waring.
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Professor Warning died from brain cancer last month aged 72, and Wednesday’s memorial service in the Great Hall detailed a career that scaled academia and the psychology profession.
The professor’s service to the university, it was agreed, was unmatched. It also had unlikely beginnings.
Professor Waring had moved from Broken Hill to Newcastle in the early 1960s to work at the BHP steelworks, and completed a bachelor of arts as a mature-aged student in 1972.
Four years later he completed a master of science in clinical psychology.
“In 1985 he began a 27-year period of service on the university governing body,” university chancellor Paul Jeans said.
“A period that will never be ceded.”
Former vice-chancellor Nick Saunders, who gave a eulogy at Professor Waring’s funeral last month at All Saints Anglican Church in New Lambton, said the nation had lost a great man.
He said he would miss his friend’s gentle wit. It was a gift noted by many; emcee Rose Thomson praised the professor’s ability to rescue a dour dinner or panel.
The deputy chair of the Australian Psychology Accreditation Council, Professor Caroline Hunt, said Professor Waring had served on the council with a “complete lack of ego” and as “a true statesman”.
The professor’s colleague Associate Professor William Warren said the same traits had allowed his friend to unite his roles as academic and practitioner.
Many of the modern guidelines for media reporting on suicide, he said, are derived from work done by Professor Waring.
So is a program that trains hairdressers how to listen to the concerns of their clients.
“Trevor closed the gap between academic and practitioner, keeping both real,” Professor Warren said.
“He was a resolver of conflicts real and imagined.”
Professor Waring’s grandson Nick Easdown paid tribute to a man who came to everything in the lives of his four children and eight grandchildren and seemed capable of magic.
After a performance by Professor Waring’s granddaughter, classical soloist Jessica Blunt, the university presented Mr Easdown with a copy of his grandfather’s 1977 masters thesis.
“Dad stood for hope; for his family, for his university, for Newcastle and for others,” added the late professor’s son, Associate Professor Peter Waring.
The family of Trevor Clifton Waring, AM, asked guests to donate to the Mark Hughes Foundation in lieu of flowers.
