Bowling Over Life's Woes

Newcastle Herald

Monday November 17, 2008

Tyron Butson

Her positive outlook was infectious, writes Tyron Butson.

OBITUARY

EVA 'EVE' LOANE WILCHER

Born: April 26, 1919

Died: November 8, 2008

Funeral: St Augustine's Church, Merewether, November 13

A WOMAN who loved life almost as much as her bowls, Eva "Eve" Loane Wilcher has died.

During a long-running sporting career that would continue almost until her death she would captain the Australian bowling team at the Commonwealth Games and consistently take out local, district, state and national events but sports reporters and officials quickly learnt never to ask her age.

Born in Lochinvar to a family of seven, Ms Wilcher took to sports at an early age and by her early teens was a champion A-grade tennis player.

Later she would move to Maitland after marrying in 1944 and it would be through her husband that she would discover one of her life's passions bowls.

The Merewether club bowler took out virtually every title and honour available in the Newcastle area since taking up the sport in 1963.

Not only did Mrs Wilcher become the first local woman to to win every Newcastle title: she did it twice over.

And she later moved on to represent the district, State and eventually Australia in a distinguished career.

In 1975, she shared the national pairs title and soon after took out the NSW singles title.

In 1977-78 Mrs Wilcher was part of the winning State fours team, while the State singles title was again hers in 1984-85.

While she often said her bowling career highlight came in 1980-81 when she won the Australian singles championship, she is possibly best remembered for captaining the Australian triples team at the 1982 Brisbane Commonwealth Games.

Her team came away with a much-prized bronze medal, which was especially gratifying for the Aussie team because it was the first time bowls had been included in the Commonwealth games.

The Australian team's success cemented the sport's place in the games.

But her introduction to bowls came almost by accident.

Her late husband Frank, a well-known journalist for both The Herald and the now defunct Newcastle Sun, introduced the tennis fanatic to bowls when the family moved to Newcastle following the 1955 flooding of Maitland and settled in Merewether.

Despite her initial misgivings about the sport, Mr Wilcher managed to convince his wife to give up tennis for bowls.

"Frank was a fanatic," she once told The Herald.

'We always played tennis together and he took up lawn bowls before I did and it just went on from there."

The pair were married in 1944 and settled to raise a family in Maitland, but the floods forced the family to relocate.

Mr Wilcher worked throughout Newcastle media and died in 1978, aged only 58, as he prepared to go on air and read the radio news.

Despite being widowed Mrs Wilcher would continue to bring up the family of three with a "naturally positive" outlook, her youngest son Gary said.

"She had this real, naturally positive outlook on the world that was infectious," he said.

"And it wasn't like she read a book and decided she needed to be more positive or woke up one day and changed everything she was just naturally positive and happy with life."

He said his mother had endeavoured to support her three children in everything they did.

"Naturally with parents like ours, sport was a big thing in our family and my mother and father loved, supported and walked us through every sport we tried out and really every decision we made.

"She loved life and she loved everyone around her."

And, despite the age gap, Mrs Wilcher still got on exceptionally well with nine grandchildren and two great-grand children.

In 1998 Mrs Wilcher was finally inducted into the Hunter Region Sporting Hall of Fame.

The Herald had backed a long-running campaign to get the amazing sportswoman named as part of the hall of fame, but, despite her obvious skill, judges were forced to refuse because she refused to disclose her age.

Finally, after numerous petitions from the newspaper and her family, she was inducted minus her age.

Her age became a running joke between her and The Herald's sports team.

During the campaign to get her elected to the hall of fame, Herald chief sportswriter Stewart Roach constantly badgered Mrs Wilcher to reveal her age, to no avail.

Finally, in triumph, he told her children that he would simply look it up as part of the Commonwealth Games records.

Fearing their mum's secret had now come undone they told her what he had said, to which she replied, "Doesn't matter I lied about my age to the Commonwealth Games as well."

Mrs Wilcher is survived by her three children, Margo, Chris and Gary, nine grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.

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© 2008 Newcastle Herald

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