By PETER SIMCOCK, FORMER JOURNAL EDITOR
THE news that Marg Stork passed away last week didn’t come entirely unexpectedly, she had been ailing for some time.
But, anticipated or dreaded, the fateful phone call still left an awful sadness and sense of loss.
I can’t really recall the first time I met Marg but I know when I first heard of her.
It was 1980, I had just arrived in Australia from the UK and had joined the editorial staff of the Journal – John Woods, Adam Hankin and Marg. Only Marg wasn’t based at the Dandenong-Frankston Road, she had her own office in the town centre.
Hankin, brusque I know but that was how he liked to be called, told me stories of how old she was (even then), how pedantic and how many people she knew. “Wait until you meet her’’.
The day must have come and gone, but meet Marg I eventually did.
My first thoughts are lost, but gradually she became part of my working life, calling in to the office in Walker Street and later the Hub Arcade to collect her copy became a regular job.
Listening to her stories about the old Scott Street office, Greg Dixon, her beloved John Woods, Hugh Buggy, her respect for photographer Barry Palmer and the innumerable other people she knew became second nature.
Marg had a work ethic beyond compare.
Having grown up during the Depression she knew everything had to be earned.
She was only in her mid-teens when she started work for The Journal, cycling here and there.
During the war years she worked in the Land Army and for the paper, writing as well as doing the bookwork.
She had a prodigious memory. Names, facts, dates, she could recall them easily even until a few weeks ago when I last spoke with her.
She wanted to share them all with readers, something which would annoy acerbic sub-editors always looking to save space.
In fact, if it was one thing Marg struggled with it was the way newspapers changed, from text heavy products that you paid for to advertising friendly handouts with far less information pushed into your letterbox.
Technology was also a problem.
Marg never adapted to computer-driven journalism.
In the mid-’80s management did try to make her use an early type of PC. They were not user friendly and hurt Marg’s wrists. She dug her heels in. The machine went and the clickety clack of the typewriter returned.
Sourcing ribbons and getting Marg’s typewriters repaired was one of the banes of my life as an editor.
She was immensely proud of Dandenong and the larger district.
I never saw her happier than when she was named a City of Greater Dandenong Living Treasure and she never missed an opportunity to spruik the city and its organisations, the CFA and Dandenong Show in particular.
To Marg’s husband Don, Julie and I send our condolences.
Life will go on without Marg but the world will not be the same.
She was a remarkable woman, a dedicated journalist who worked for the same paper for nearly 75 years.
I will miss her.
Vale Marg.
