Nobody has a bad word for Jan Sharman. Nobody.
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She has been involved in pretty well every good cause there is, even today at the age of 81.
But time moves on and she is stepping back from the presidency of the Glen Innes Hospital Auxiliary at its annual general meeting.
She will remain involved but not as president. She will become the organisation’s patron when Nancy Burridge steps down at the age of 100.
Jan has a life-time of stories, having arrived in Glen Innes as a girl who wanted to train as a nurse.
Well, he always used to have a scotch for me when I came home.
- Jan Sharman on why she would share a scotch with him at his grave.
At first, she didn’t like the look of the place when her parents brought her up from Lismore.
Didn’t like it at all – “too many gum trees”, she thought.
She said she “bellowed like a poddy calf”.
To which her father replied: “Well, you said you wanted to be a nurse”.
“I was a young girl who wasn’t going to stay for a day”.
But she did. In fact, she stayed for a life-time, for the next six decades.
“The people were so good to me. They supported me”, she says.
She met her husband, Col, who passed away some two decades ago.
For many years after, she would go up to the cemetery and drink a whisky with him, talking to him beyond the grave in the early morning or evening.
“Well, he always used to have a scotch for me when I came home”.
She said she misses him to this day.
She has nothing but gratitude to the people she has known and who have come to love her.
“I want to thank the people of this town for their support and their caring over many, many years”, she says.
“I’ve had the privilege to be part of the hospital auxiliary. It’s time now for younger people to step forward”.
