Sketcher
of the stars Tony Rafty dies days before his 100th
birthday
- 9th October 2015
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Ton
of talent: A caricature of Betty Cuthbert. Tony Rafty,
right, holds an autographed illustration of Muhammad
Ali
By
Roy Masters
Tony
Rafty's zest for life, so evident in his more than
10,000 published sketches of politicians, sportspeople
and entertainers, finally left him at 4pm on Friday,
only three days shy of his 100th birthday.
The
former Fairfax cartoonist, war correspondent and author
of Australia's first comic strip, has drawn more live
subjects than possibly anyone, breathing life into
them, but now it has left him as he struggled to reach
his century on Monday.
A
private ambulance was to collect him on Saturday at
noon from an eastern suburbs hospital and transport
him to Danny's Seafood restaurant at La Perouse, where
his family will still gather for a celebratory lunch.
His
son Andrew said: "He has been the Eveready battery
rabbit all his life and although his health has deteriorated
the past six months with pneumonia twice, he had such
a strong will to reach 100."
Rafty
kick-started the Australian comic book industry with
"Jimmy Rodney on Secret Service" and his
caricatures range from English cricketer Walter Hammond
in 1936 to former politician Peter Garrett in 2010.
He
was the first in his craft to have his works chosen
for commemorative stamps, when Australia Post selected
sportsmen Victor Trumper Walter Lindrum, Sir Norman
Brookes and Darby Munro for a 1981 issue.
"I
have drawn more people in the world from life than
anyone before or likely to be in the future, with
almost all signed by the subject," he told me
in a 1997 interview.
Of
his Beatles sketch, he said he believed that it is
the only one in the world autographed by all four.
"They signed photographs, but never drawings."
He
had a Donald Bradman dated 1936, Frank Sedgman and
Jimmy Carruthers together in the boxer's 1948 camp,
Dame Mary Gilmore (1962), Harold Holt "three
weeks before he drowned" in 1967 and Sir John
Kerr (1985). Entertainers include Louis Armstrong,
Nat King Cole, Bob Hope and Frank Sinatra.
He
sketched more than 250 Australian Olympians, from
the 1948 London Games, which he covered, to 2000 in
Sydney. His drawings of world-class golfers, including
a range on Jack Nicklaus, are a breathtaking walk
down the fairway of the memory.
One
of his favourite stories is standing at a urinal with
Australia's longest-serving Prime Minister, Sir Robert
Menzies, at the opening of the (now closed) Journalists
Club in Surry Hills.
"While
Menzies and I were releasing water, I asked him if
he would open an exhibition I was holding in Canberra,"
Rafty said.
"Certainly,"
said Menzies, and the exhibition was duly held.
Menzies
brought along (his successors as Liberal leader) John
Gorton, Billy McMahon, Billy Snedden and Holt.
Rafty
says Menzies was not thin-skinned about cartoonists
lampooning him. "Shortly after Menzies agreed
to open my exhibition, his press office rang and asked
if he could exhibit editorial cartoons Sir Robert
had acquired over the years. Eight of the 12 cartoons
were anti-Menzies."
Not
all of Rafty's subjects have liked his drawings. He
said of Peter "Zorba" Peters, a Manly rugby
league player and journalist on the now defunct afternoon
newspaper The Sun: "Peters didn't like a drawing
I did of him. He chased me up the stairs and was going
to throw me out the fifth-floor window of Fairfax's
old Broadway building. John Benaud (then sports editor
and a former Test cricketer) stopped him."
Rafty
demonstrated greater concern for the welfare of his
Fairfax colleagues, once rescuing a Sun journalist
and photographer from an Indonesian jail.
While
in Singapore at the end of World War II, he received
a cable from The Sun, saying, "Another war has
started. Catch up with Sukarno."
He
journeyed to Surabaya where Indonesian President Sukarno
was involved in fierce fighting against Dutch and
British forces.
Rafty
befriended Sukarno, an art lover and convinced him
to release the two men.
At
age 95, he returned to Surabaya where an exhibition
of his work chronicling Indonesia's struggle for independence
was displayed.
Rafty's
only wife, Shirley, the mother of their five children,
died three years ago.
Her
death, together with that of his brother Stan, were
sad memories in a bountiful life, which included the
awarding of an OAM in 1991.
Stan,
who also worked at The Sun, enlisted at the outbreak
of World War II, was captured at the fall of Singapore
and drowned when the Japanese troop ship Rakuyo Maru
was torpedoed by an American submarine on September
12, 1944.
Tony
was on a US PT boat in the same sea, unaware death
had its choice of two Raftys that raging night.
"Stan
and I were in the same cyclone," said Tony, who
was the first to interview the 96 survivors. "I
still grieve for my brother."
Stan
died aged 26, leaving Tony to live a whirlwind life,
two for the price of one.?
(The
Sydney Morning Herald)
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