Vale Ted Harrison

[XP-72]

G'day All,

for those who knew him & were trained by him, Ted Harrison slipped the surly bonds on the 27th, havn't got the funeral arangements yet, will post them when I find out.

XP-72

:(

[Atlas Shrugged]

The sad loss of a wonderful man. If there is a heaven, he'll stay a pilot and roam the universe as an angel.

Atlas

[gaunty]

Was that Ted the engineer ex de Havilland, MMA and so on. ?

[HarveyGee]

Not Ted from Rex Flight Centre in the 80's? Tell us more, please!

[tsnake]

I have just been told Ted's funeral will be held at 1430hrs on Monday, July 5, at the Northern Suburbs Crematorium in Sydney. His former colleagues at The Sunday Telegraph are working on an obiturary for Bomber for publication on Sunday, July 4.

[XP-72]

G'day All,

Mary has just rung me & the funeral is now at 1445 Monday.

Yep Ted was an instructor at Rex Aviation BK for about 10 years - prior to that he was variously a journalist, member of the CMF and a prime mover in the field of parachuting in Australia.

The following is a post from the aus.aviation newgroup where Ted was a serious protagonist taking on some very insignificat ex military wankers who tried to be 'king of the kids', amongst others - little did they realise just what sort of intelect and life experience Ted had.


I fnally tracked down an old mate that Ted and I had in common- Col Parsons. Unfortunately it was too late for Col to contact Ted before his death. Ted's friendship with Col dates back to their school days. I have Col's permission to post his letter to this newsgroup as a fitting tribute to his old mate. For my part, Col's description of Ted helps me to better understand the Ted we knew.


G'day John,

Thank you so much for your message and the info about Ted. Very poignant indeed, and it leaves one sad to find that one of life's Great Extraverts and Memorable Characters has gone to the big dropzone in the sky.

Having met Ted you may be interested in a few more details about him. He and I both attended Woodville High School in the early 1950s and were both keen members of the school's army cadet unit. As was typical of Ted throughout life, he had unbounded energy and enthusiasm for the things in which he was interested and could not care at all about the rest. As a
result he became the leading Cadet Lieutenant in the unit and just about ran things single-handed (another consistent idiosyncrasy), and regarded the permanent Army overseers as something of a drawback. On leaving school we all expected Ted to follow his enthusiasm into Duntroon and to become Australia's next C-in-C.

I did not meet him again until mid-1961, when I responded to a small advertisement in the Sunday Mail seeking expressions of interest in forming a parachute club. Re-enter Ted, who in the meantime had become a journalist and part-time officer in the CMF, where he achieved the rare feat of talking his way into the Army's basic parachuting course - almost unheard of, since
it was reserved for the full-time elite. Parachuting consumed him, and he returned to Adelaide and became the driving force behind its establishment and development as a sport here.

He only had 8 Army static-line jumps himself and the DCA requirements in 1961 for a Chief Instructor were a minimum of 50 (!). In no way daunted, Ted located a former Polish parachute instructor from WW2 who had done 400 static-line jumps but who knew nothing about freefall and had not jumped since 1944. However, the bureaucratic problem was solved. He then ferretted out a young Hungarian who had just emigrated to Oz and had been the Hungarian Junior Champion and had 38 freefall jumps. We also got hold of a book by an American which described the newly developing freefall techniques. What more could you want!

Ted's combination of natural ability, venturesome personality and full throttle approach to his latest passion, saw him rapidly sort out this freefall stuff. Typically he would go up and try something out and then the rest of us would follow his lead. In effect, he was the Chief Instructor, who also imbued every one of us with his infectious enthusiasm and daring approach. I look back on those times with a combination of fascination and awe. There was the absolute excitement of being a pioneer, but how the
hell some of us did not bite the dust I don't know.

There were some close shaves. Typically, Ted decided for all of us that baton-passing in freefall was the way to go He set his eyes on the world record, which the Yanks had set at 6 passes. I remember watching one practice jump out of our 7-place deHavilland Rapide in which Ted and the Best-of-the-Rest opened at about 400-500 AGL. I actually lost sight of them falling below the tops of the trees surrounding the packing area, and stood
there, catatonic, listening for the thuds. Instead came the characteristic Harrison bellow "****, that was close!" and the day proceeded without further comment.

Around about that time, Ted became the main reporter for the News and the Sunday Mail covering the Beaumont case. This journalistic distinction, plus some personal relationship difficulties in Adelaide, led to him moving to Sydney where I again lost regular contact with him.

However, 5-6 years later our paths crossed at a DZ inVictoria. His skydiving life now revolved around freefall formation building and I watched him and 9 others build Australia's first 10-way star at the third or fourth attempt. Seems like baby-stuff now, but then it was cutting edge and all the techniques of relative descent rates, horizontal closure, keeping the formation stable... all had to be worked out. So, do it the Harrison way.

Another gap of some years occurred and it was not until the early 1970s that I met him by sheer coincidence at Bankstown. Now Ted was a flying instructor, and had just left a meeting with CAA heavies. Why? The previous afternoon he had done a charter in a Seneca to some place up-country. Some sort of problem occurred and he asked someone to refuel the aircraft whilst
he attended to it. You guessed it, he did not check the refuelling and did not notice the fuel state until he was en route back to Bankstown, at night. He made the desision to continue to Bankstown, calculating that he could make it with the smell of avgas being used for the landing. The engines stopped close enough to Hoxton Park for him to deadstick in. He lost his
licence as a result, but the story is so typical of the guy's
self-belief, disregard for convention, and absolute skill. A volatile,
irrepressible, charismatic, loveable larikin. It's a pleasure to say that many people's lives were enrichened by his own.

So nice to hear from you, John. I hope our paths cross sometime and we can swap all those stories which we birdbrains are apt to tell and retell.

Cheers

Col

So now you know. Vale Ted, heaven will never be the same.....

Coop

[Chimbu chuckles]

Ted was one of my instructors in my PPL/CPL phase. He was truly a fun guy to fly with and a great teacher.

I'm fairly certain the seneca incident happened early 80s as I remember it well. Very few pilots could have pulled off a night, deadstick landing into an unlight little airfield using only the beacon atop 2FC as a reference. My memory was that they didn't completely remove his licence. From memory DoT air took the view "Nice bit of flying you ********!!":) And on his career continued.

Vale Ted indeed...I have not seen or spoken to Ted in 20 years but feel sad at his passing...the world is indeed poorer for it.

Chuck.

[Bon Giorno]

From todays Sunday Telegraph -
Ted Harrison, journalist parachutist, pilot, instructor and computer enthusiast, died peacefully at his home last weekend.

A sub-editor on both The Sunday Telegraph and on the Daily Telegraph before that, Ted was widely respected as a professional journalist with a dedication to accuracy and man with a wicked sense of humour. Born Clifford Edward Hall Harrison in Adelaide in 1936, he began his working life as an advertising copywriter before joining the Adelaide News as a reporter. He moved to Sydney in the late'60s, becoming a police reporter for The Sun.

But Ted had a double life. When he wasn't looking for clues in the low dives of Adelaide and Sydney, his heart and soul were often in the skies.

One of the pioneers of sports parachuting in South Australia, he continued his attachment to the then new pastime in Sydney and was one of the early proponents at freefall and formation skydiving.

He was in the forefront of freefall photography as well before he moved from jumping out of aircraft to staying in them.

Ted became a licensed pilot and then a flying instructor working, from Bankstown Airport, He returned to journalism in early 1984, joining the Daily Telegraph sub-editors desk. As the newspaper progressed to becoming a completely computerized operation, Ted embraced the new techniques and worked as a trainer and consultant.

He returned to active journalism when he moved to the Sunday Telegraph in 1995 when his love of words, his own sharp wit and sometimes biting sense of humour added to the colour of the newsroom.

Colleagues rejoiced in his loyalty and in his passion for his work and for the vast extracurricular experience he brought to the job.

Ted was a man who could turn his hand to a number of jobs; and equally his range of friends was extraordinary, He is survived by his wife, Mary Falloon, his son Jim and daughter Kate and three children by a previous marriage.