By CASEY NEILL
DANDENONG treasure and former mayoress Gwen Jarvis has died just weeks shy of her 93rd birthday.
Alongside her late husband and three-time Dandenong mayor Maurie Jarvis, Gwen not only built a life in Dandenong for her own family, but a community for generations to come.
She made her mark through the Truby King Infant Welfare Centre, Dandenong West Kindergarten and Primary School, Girl Guides, Dandenong Trinity Uniting Church and Wallara.
“Wallara was started in our living room in 1959,” Gwen proudly told the Journal.
For 40 years she volunteered with Dandenong’s Festival of Music and Art for Youth, and the YWCA recognised her work to establish the organisation in Dandenong by naming a facility in her honour in Hammond Road.
Gwen was named a City of Greater Dandenong Living Treasure, an honour reserved for people who made a lasting impact on the quality and nature of life for all in the municipality.
She was the second daughter of Charles and Doris McPhee and was born at home in Close Avenue, Dandenong, in 1922.
She attended Dandenong West Primary School followed by Dandenong High School, where she was a prefect in her final year.
Church was an important part of her family’s life and it was there Gwen met Maurie.
They were married in the Methodist Church in 1944 when Maurie was home on war-time leave from the Torres Strait Islands.
They first lived in Stud Road, Dandenong, before building a home in Jones Road, Dandenong West.
Journal reporter and Gwen’s Dandy High classmate Marg Stork in 2012 wrote: “Over the years, I had the pleasure of visiting them at their home, to see the banks of beautiful rhododendrons which struck a colourful springtime note and which we featured in the Dandenong Journal on a number of occasions.”
Gwen moved into Valley Village Mews on Stud Road, Dandenong, when Maurie passed away in 2003 and later moved to Millhaven Lodge in Pakenham where she died peacefully on Friday 14 August.
During her 85 years in Dandenong, Gwen watched a small country town transform into a bustling multicultural city.
Gwen’s grandson and Journal reporter Russell Bennett recently spoke to her for the paper’s 150th anniversary, and said her memories of what made Dandenong so great in her eyes were still as vivid as ever.
“All the friends we had were great – they were my life. The people there were all good to me, and I was good to them,” she said.
At a council-hosted 90th birthday party in 2012, Gwen told Marg: “I love Dandenong. It is the city where my heart is.”
Gwen is survived by daughters Elizabeth, Bronwyn, Sue and Marion, eight grandchildren and 14 great-grandchildren.
