Published on Tuesday, 17 September 2024 at 4:26:21 PM
Welcome to #TimeWarpTuesday as we remember Mr “Chipper” Day.
There is plaque on a bench in Harrold Rossiter Park, Kensington, that commemorates a local character, tennis player and community advocate - Mr Frank Edmund Day, also known as “Chipper”.
PH00216-02 Commemorative plaque for Chipper Day on a park bench in Harold Rossiter Park
Photographed by Tom Ogilby. Courtesy of the Local History Collection, Town of Victoria Park Library Service.
The nickname was bestowed on Mr Day because of his way of regularly greeting people by saying "chip away chippa day". Mr Day was a well-known member of the Higgins Park Tennis Club, and rarely missed his daily walk in the park with his beloved dogs, 'Sid' and 'Angela'.
The plaque reads: "Chipper Day / 1932-2018 / 'He loved this park and / helped save it for / the people and their dogs' ".
PH00216-01 Chipper Day walking his dogs in Harold Rossiter Park, circa 2017. Photographed by (now Deputy Mayor) Bronwen Ife.
Courtesy of the Local History Collection, Town of Victoria Park Library Service.
We don’t know a lot more about Mr Day, except for him having a rather lethal left-hand action when he played tennis at the Higgins Park Tennis Club, and for his staunch support for maintaining Harold Rossiter Park and not allowing a synthetic turf hockey facility to be built on the site.
Mr Day was married to Heather and the couple had a son named James.
Death Notice in The West Australian, Tuesday 23 January 2018, p. 51 - DAY, Frank Edmund
We are looking to write a small biographical entry for Mr Day in the Victoria Park Dictionary of Biography, and so are keen to hear from people who may have known him. Can you help us add to Mr Day’s story? Do you know whether he was born in the Town and grew up here? Or did he come to live here later in life? Does anyone have details of his working, sporting and family lives? You may even have a memory of chatting with Chipper, that you’d like to share with us? If so, please reach out to us here the Library. You can email: vicparklibrary@vicpark.wa.gov.au, you can phone: 08 9373 5500, or drop in and see us.
#LoveVicPark #HigginsParkTennisClub
References:
- Ife, Bronwen, 2024, [Personal recollections of “Chipper” Day.]
- Town of Victoria Park, Ordinary Council Minutes, 11 July 2017, pp. 10-13, 183-362.
- 'Day, Frank Edmund, 'Death Notice', 2018, The West Australian, Tuesday 23 January 2018, p. 51.
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