Ronald Metcalfe AM gave much of his life to the RSL. He also served the community as a soldier and RAAF member during WWII and as an immigration officer after the war.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
Mr Metcalfe, who died on Thursday, is to be remembered at a thanksgiving service on Friday which is expected to be attended by members of the many community and interest groups he supported.
"Ron was a wonderful man, always courteous and helpful, who did a great deal for our members over the years," Jan Paulga, the president of the City of Canberra RSL, said.
"He was an (RSL) meritorious medal holder. That is one of our highest awards. But he had many other strings to his bow."
The 95-year-old had been working for the Prime Minister's Department when war broke out in 1939. He enlisted in the army in August, 1940, and was discharged to join the RAAF in June 1942.
By mid-1945 he was a corporal on Morotai, then a major Allied military base, and working as a cipher assistant in the communications branch.
He returned to the public service after being discharged in 1946 and joined the immigration department the following year.
At one time Australia's only child immigration officer, Mr Metcalfe later defended the schemes that brought 2536 children aged between seven and 13 to Australia over a 10-year period after the war.
"You would always find ways to improve child migration, always," he told one interviewer in 2008. "But I don't think that the way that it has been put ... that all the people looking after them were devils and so on ... it doesn't add up."
Mr Metcalfe noted that although he had been the only "migration officer - child" in existence at the time, none of the critics of the child migration schemes had ever spoken to him.
Appointed assistant secretary in 1968, Mr Metcalfe retired in 1981. He chaired the Immigration Review Panel from 1984 to 1987.
Mr Metcalfe married Nancy, in 1946. He is survived by a large family including 11 grandchildren and great grandchildren.
In addition to being honoured with life membership of the Turner Cricket Club and an honorary vice presidency of the National RSL, he was made a member of the Order of Australia in 2012 for his service to the community of the Australian Capital Territory as a community radio presenter, through the promotion of military history, and as a volunteer with national cultural institutions.
"When I first joined the RSL in the mid-1980s Ron was still active in a range of capacities," Mr Paulga said. "I had a good rapport with him and found he was a font of knowledge and part of our corporate knowledge of what happened, where and when."
