Kathleen Agnes Rose (Kitty) McEwan (1894-1969)

Journalist, golfer, war worker, RHSV Councillor 1953-1969.

Sports journalist and golf enthusiast Kitty McEwan was the daughter of early HSV Councillor John McEwan and his wife Mary (Minnie) Fowler, also a Society member. So she grew up surrounded by a sense of the importance of history.

During World War Two Kitty was appointed Victorian superintendent of the Australian Women’s Land Army, lobbying for better living and working conditions for the ‘land girls’. After the war she returned to journalism, championing the cause of women in sport until her retirement in 1966.

She had many interests, was a book collector like her father, and served on the executive of the National Council of Women of Victoria. In 1933 she joined the HSV and around that time wrote a series of articles on pioneering women for Table Talk. In 1952, the year the Society added ‘Royal’ to its name, she became a Life Member of the RHSV. From 1953 to 1967 she served as its fifth woman Councillor and appears as the lone woman in a photograph taken of the Council in 1959, the Society’s centenary year. She was joined later that year by Marjorie Tipping.

Kitty was an active councillor. Among other things, she was chairman of the Society’s membership committee, served on its newsletter committee and organised visits of country groups to Melbourne. She put her journalistic skills to work, too, interviewing long-time RHSV secretary and the Society’s first Fellow, A.T. Latham, for a journal article.

In 1969, Kitty, that ‘well-known and well-loved Councillor’, suffered a serious illness from which she did not recover. She died in August 1969 after a long period of outstanding service to the RHSV. In her will she left a bequest to the Society that had played an important part in her family’s life for 60 years.

Kaleidoscope exhibition text by Cheryl Griffin, February 2022. Full entry to follow.