4 January 1928 – 14 July 2020
Today we honour and celebrate the life of Lionel Edward Rose, one of our long-serving volunteers and colleague at the Uniting Church WA.
Lionel was a dedicated volunteer in the Uniting Church WA Archives department for ten years. He previously worked in the Uniting Church WA Property Department, consulting and looking after church properties.
Before Lionel started working at the Uniting Church WA, he had a successful career in banking, working for the Bank of New South Wales for 44 years! During this time, he travelled to many country towns.
When Lionel retired from banking, he was persuaded by a friend to join the Uniting Church WA Property Department.
“When the time came for Lionel to retire from the Property Department, I suggested he could continue to share his church property knowledge with us and help sort through the mountain of property records held in our Archives office,” said Sheena Hesse, Uniting Church WA Archivist.
“Within a few months of his retirement, Lionel turned up at our archives office and started the mammoth task of bringing order to chaos”.
“Lionel’s attention to detail and the ability to remember past events was invaluable.”
Lionel was a great sportsman and loved camping. Many of his stories relate to his time at the surf club and playing tennis, football and golf for various country towns.
In between golfing, Lionel increased his volunteering from one day to two days.
A result of his dedication is an amazingly well-documented record of property records for future reference, said Sheena.
“Lionel passed the retirement age of 90 for our Archive volunteers, as he said there was still a lot of work to complete.”
Rest in Peace Lionel. Thank you for your years of service to the Uniting Church WA.
You will be fondly remembered by everyone.
Top image: Lionel celebrated his 90th birthday with fellow Archive volunteers at the Uniting Church Centre.
Elsa Samuel