‘Mother of the year’
NZPA Sydney Mrs Barbara Mackay, the wife of Griffith’s missing anti-drug campaigner, has been chosen as New South Wales’ “Mother of the Year” for 1977. The patron of the Child Care Leek Committee (Lady; Cutler presented Mrs Mac-, kay with her award at a: glittering luncheon at Syd-i ney’s Wentworth Hotel. The “Mother of the Year” committee decided on Mrs Mackay for the award because “she so valiantly held her family together after the disappearance of her husband in suspicious circumstances following his campaign against drug abuse.” After the tragedy Mrs Mackay could have well been excused for isolating herself from the community, but instead she became more involved and is now seeking to give young people an alternative to the drug scene, the committee said in a press statement. After the presentation, the stunned mother of four — Paul aged 19, Ruth aged 16, Mary aged 13 and three-year-old James — said she was honoured to be chosen for the award. Mrs Mackay said that since her husband’s disappearance there had been a lot of pressures on herself and the children, and the task of raising them had sometimes been a little difficult.
“The focus of publicity I has been on the children and myself and the fact that we still don’t know what happened to Don has been a little hard to bear. “But we trust that we are being looked after, and are living a day at a time hoping that one day we will know the full truth of what happened,” Mrs Mackay said. “But I don’t suppose I am doing anything different in raising the children from what I did before Don’s disappearance.” Commenting on raising the four children. Mrs Mackay said: “It has been an honour — very trying at times, but I’ve had the same problems that every mother has had to cope with.”
For the mother-to-be of the 19705, Mrs Mackay said: “Do what you believe in your heart you know to be right and not be too swayed by the pressures and influences you are constantly having pushed on you these days.”
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Press, 21 September 1977, Page 16
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352‘Mother of the year’ Press, 21 September 1977, Page 16
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