Chaplain’s Note
Leadership through service has been an aspiration of our school from its very beginning, and to illustrate this I thought I would share with you the story of a family whose service and sacrifice exemplify such aspiration and the character of our school.
One of our Founders was Reverend Edward Howard Lea, the rector of St Mark’s Anglican Church, Darling Point. It was at his house that the first meetings took place for the founding of our school. Edward Howard Lea was a man of vision and service. Cranbrook was not the only institution he played a part in founding. He served on a council for fulfilling the spiritual needs of people in the bush, and he would be the first to radio broadcast a church service to do so. He also helped establish St Luke’s hospital in Potts Point, which, like Cranbrook, remains in operation to this day.
It was said that he was a person of ‘dignity, which was wedded to a warm and generous nature, an engaging charm, and a capacity for unflagging zeal not only in the interests of the Church, but in the wider needs of the community’. His was a life of service, of which we are in part the beneficiaries.
Which brings us to his son, Reginald, who attended the school his father had helped found. Reginald John Howard Lea was born in December 1915, so was 2 ½ years old when our school was founded in 1918 and may have been playing at the feet of those who planned it as they thought of future students like him one day coming here. After graduating from Cranbrook, he studied Arts and Law at Sydney University and at 20 joined the Royal Australian Air Force in 1935.
Sadly, six years later, in June 1941, during WW2, he would be killed in air combat above Syria, providing air cover to soldiers like my grandfather who was fighting in the Australian 7th Division there. Reginald is remembered on our Honour Roll which overlooks the Mackay Lawn, in the Book of Remembrance at Sydney University, the Australian War Memorial WW2 Honour Roll and the Beirut War Cemetery.
Jesus, before his own death, said to his disciples, “My command is this: love each other as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends” (John 15:12-13). Loving service, whether of country or community, does not require death, but it does involve sacrifices. These may be in time, energy, interest and/or resources.
When we are more mindful of the sacrifices others have made in our service, I hope that it will help us to be more motivated and generous in our service of others in turn.
At the Anzac Memorial in Hyde Park there is an installation which includes dirt from the various battlefields where Australian servicemen have fought and died. Surrounding this floor installation is a circular wall with soil from communities all around our state. It is a reminder that it was ordinary people, from ordinary places who were prepared to make extraordinary sacrifices in the service of others.
To be a school which aspires to leadership through service, we would do well to remember those who have given of themselves for our flourishing, people like Reverend and Reginald Howard Lea, people like our mothers! God himself sets this example for us in his own sacrifice and says to his followers, ‘love each other as I have loved you’.
So, embrace and commit to the service opportunities you have here at school. Make them a habit now for your life beyond it, that you might be known as one who seeks to serve rather than be served. For this is what true leaders do.
Rod Farraway
Chaplain