By Tony Wright
Mary Crean, the matriarch of one of Australia's most famed political dynasties and an acute political mind herself, has died at the age of 103.
Fiercely loyal to her politician husband and the sons who would follow, Mrs Crean witnessed at the closest of quarters many of the most dramatic events in Australian Labor Party history.
Mary Crean at home in Melbourne in 2003.Credit: Paul Harris PRH
Mrs Crean – then Mary Findlay – married Frank Crean in Melbourne in 1946.
Her husband, who served for six years in the Victorian state parliament and a further 26 years in the federal parliament where he weathered 11 elections as the Member for Melbourne Ports, went on to become Treasurer and deputy leader in the Whitlam Government.
Then treasurer Frank Crean, pictured in 1975 with prime minister Gough Whitlam.
Mary and Frank Crean, who never owned a car, lived for all of their 63 years of marriage in Melbourne's inner south. Frank Crean died in 2008, aged 92.
The family home in Middle Park was, according to their son Simon in a parliamentary eulogy to his father, "a house of energy", regularly visited by leading Labor figures such as Dr H.V. Evatt, Arthur Calwell and Gough Whitlam, and more regularly by constituents in need of assistance.
"We always had people coming to the door…" he said. "Mum and Dad were always there, helping people in trouble."
In fact, Mary Crean was there, bringing up three boys and essentially acting as her husband's electorate officer, far more than her husband, who spent long periods away in Canberra. But there was almost always a roast dinner on weekends.
Mary Crean (centre) with sons David and Simon at the state funeral for Frank Crean at St Paul's Cathedral Melbourne in 2008 .Credit: Craig Abraham
"Mary Crean was an incredible person," former ACTU secretary and friend of the Crean family, Bill Kelty, said on Tuesday.
"She was vibrant, smart, and had a superb sense of political judgment. In other circumstances, she could have been prime minister.
Mary Crean, wife of the treasurer Frank Crean, in 1973.Credit: Fairfax Media
"There was no nonsense about her; she was really, really smart. I was just talking to Paul Keating about her this morning. We all had so much respect for her."
Apart from advising her family on politics, Mrs Crean volunteered at kindergartens, helped organise annual collections for the Red Cross, the Salvos and Freedom from Hunger, became Victorian Commissioner of the Girl Guides, and was a keen patron of the arts through involvement with the National Gallery of Victoria.
"Mum had an aptitude for anything she put her mind towards," Simon Crean said on Tuesday.
"She was a terrific motivator to everyone around her, always encouraging them to do their best and be their best."
A children's playground near the old family home has since been named the Frank and Mary Crean Reserve. It sits on the site of the Presbyterian Church – since demolished – where Mary and Frank met and were married.
Simon was one of two Crean sons to become politicians: Simon Crean was the federal member for Hotham for 13 years, served as a minister in the Hawke, Keating, Rudd and Gillard governments and was leader of the Labor Party for two years at the start of this century.
David, a medical doctor, was a Tasmanian state parliamentarian from 1992 to 2004, and for the last six years of that period was the Labor state treasurer. He later served for a decade as chairman of Snowy Hydro.
Mrs Crean was intensely proud of her family members' achievements, but her greatest tribulation was the loss of her eldest son, Stephen, who went missing after skiing from Charlotte's Pass in the Snowy Mountains in August, 1985.
Stephen, a public servant, was just 38. An intensive search failed to find him. A bushwalker stumbled over his remains on the bank of the Thredbo River 18 months later.
Among Mrs Crean's many years of volunteer work, she was for more than 30 years patron of the library Melbourne High School, where her husband and sons received their secondary education. In the 1970s she stood for a political position herself, but despite winning the biggest primary vote, lost on preferences in her attempt to sit on the South Melbourne Council.
The funeral of Mrs Crean, the grandmother of six, will be at The Church of St Paul the Apostle, South Melbourne Uniting Church, on Monday, February 5.