Obituaries: The Advertiser remembers Keith Lovell, Graham Latimer and Paul Cox

A PIONEER of neonatal medicine, an influential Maori and an award-winning film maker are remembered today in The Advertiser’s obituaries.

Dr Keith Lovell

A PIONEER of neonatal medicine, an influential Maori and an award-winning film maker are remembered today in The Advertiser’s obituaries.

DR KEITH EVERETT LOVELL

KEITH Lovell was a pioneer of neonatal medicine in South Australia.

Born in Ceduna between the two World Wars as the second eldest of four boys, his early life was coloured by the tragic death of his mother, who succumbed to illness when he was only eight.

The family had settled in Adelaide for better health care and Keith undertook his primary school education at Colonel Light Gardens Primary School before attending Unley High School where he excelled academically. In the 1942 Year 11 examinations he topped the state in Maths 2, was second in Maths 1 and Latin and finished second overall.

Heading off to university was unheard of in his family and so he found work as a clerk in an insurance office. Fortunately, the headmaster of Unley High intervened and convinced Keith’s father he was an exceptional student who should attend university.

He was appointed head prefect of Unley High for the year he returned to complete leaving honours.

In 1944 Keith commenced his medical studies at University of Adelaide and graduated with a credit in 1949 and had a first job at the Mareeba Babies’ Home. He married his sweetheart, Fay, the next year.

After a short time in general practice he became a clinical assistant at the Adelaide Children’s Hospital before travelling to London with Fay and his young family — daughter Virginia and son David — to work at the Great Ormond Street Hospital and later with the internationally renowned paediatrician Professor Ronald Illingworth, the first Professor of Child Health in the UK, at Sheffield.

The Lovells returned to Adelaide in 1958 where Keith started work part-time as a paediatric registrar at the Queen Victoria Hospital. He also continued his general practice and completed his MD thesis. In 1971 he was appointed the staff paediatrician at the QVH and over the next five years, with his registrar Dr John Martin, established the QVH’s Neonatal Intensive Care Nursery.

The workload was immense but rewarding. They introduced state-of-the-art electronic monitoring of babies and innovative techniques including double catheter blood transfusion, phototherapy and CPAP (continuous positive airway pressure) for babies in respiratory distress.

Under their guidance, and with the later assistance of Dr Ross Haslam, the nursery became a world-class facility; a reputation it retains since being incorporated at the Women’s and Children’s Hospital.

During his 33 years at the QVH, Keith looked after around 60,000 babies with at least 2500 infant patients a year and became a household name in neonatology before hanging up his stethoscope in 1992 to return to general practice. On retirement, he still held the QVH medical staff record for 12 continuous nights of broken sleep, with at least two interruptions each night.

A kind, quiet and thoughtful man, his hard-work and dedication were legendary among his many colleagues, with over 150 of them attending his farewell dinner from the QVH.

He retired from medicine in 2003.

Beside medical practice, Keith was dedicated to his wife and family and loved to be surrounded by his grandchildren and great grandchildren.

He had a wide range of interests outside of medicine. As a talented sportsman he was a keen tennis and golf player and a passionate supporter of the Sturt and Adelaide Crows football clubs.

He loved music, in particular Mozart, and when time permitted, he enjoyed playing the piano. An interest in thoroughbred breeding and racing saw him notch up winners he bred in South Australia, New South Wales and Victoria.

Keith died suddenly at his home on the March 19, 2016. He is survived by his wife of 65 years Fay, his children Virginia and David, a Supreme Court Justice, six grandchildren and seven great grandchildren.

SIR GRAHAM STANLEY LATIMER, KBE

GRAHAM Latimer was regarded as the most influential Maori of his generation.

He helped shape New Zealand through a series of struggles for Maori rights and the enforcement of the Treaty of Waitangi.

Born on the Aupouri Peninsula in Northland, at the tip of New Zealand’s north island, he was the third son of Anglo-Maori Graham Latimer from the Ngati Whatua tribe and his Scottish-Irish wife, Lillian.

At the age of 14, he travelled with his parents to Waitangi, in the Bay of Islands, to celebrate the centenary of the signing of the Treaty, that supposedly gave sovereignty to the British Crown in exchange for recognition over land rights for Maori tribes, but remains contentious today.

Graham enlisted in the army in 1943 and later joined “J Force”, as part of the Allied occupation of Japan, where he served until 1947 helping to rebuild the country after World War II. In 1948, he married Emily Moore, a sister of an army buddy, and they had five children.

Sir Graham Latimer

Graham worked for New Zealand Rail, becoming station master at Kaiwaka in 1952, a position he held until 1961 until the family bought a farm in Tinopai, north of Auckland, and quickly established themselves in the community.

In 1964 he was appointed to the newly-formed New Zealand Maori Council, becoming chairman in 1973; a role he held for 40 years.

Tasked with promoting the Treaty that elders feared could be removed by legislation, he built strong relationships in political circles and served as the National Party’s Maori vice-president from 1981-92.

Criticism that he was simply an establishment figure was destroyed in 1987 when Graham led the Maori Council in fighting the Lange Labour government’s plan to sell Crown farms, forests and trading departments, and to privatise fisheries.

He was knighted on Waitangi Day in 1981.

Lady Emily died in 2015. Graham is survived by his children and grandchildren.

PAULUS HENRIQUE BENEDICTUS “PAUL” COX

PAUL Cox was an award-winning filmmaker, widely recognised as Australia’s most prolific film auteur and the “father of independent cinema”.

Several of his most famous and idiosyncratic, low-budget movies, including Human Touch (2004), The Diaries of Vaslav Nijinsky (2001), Innocence (2000), and Lust and Revenge (1996) were made in South Australia, where he received support throughout his career.

Sydney-based, he used the SA Film Corporation’s post-production facilities at Hendon for many years.

Acknowledging, at the Adelaide world premiere, the integral contribution of the Adelaide and South Australian film festivals to the making of his documentary Kaluapapa Heaven (2007), Cox declared: “South Australia has always been good to me’’.

In his autobiography, Reflections (1998), he singled out for special praise former SA Film Corp chief executive Judith McCann, who dared to “fight all the odds and have taste and compassion, vision and generosity of spirit’’.

Paul Cox.

Other SA supporters included former state premier David Tonkin, chairman of the SA Film Corp, film guru and director of Trak Cinema, Barry Loane, and producer Mark Patterson.

Cox was born in Venlo, a city in the southeast Netherlands, near the German border during World War II, the son of Wim Cox, a documentary film producer and photographer and Else, a German native.

His first memories — of a Nazi invasion — haunted him for life.

He immigrated to Australia in 1965, aged 25, by which time he had already established a reputation as a photographer. Film was his hobby.

“If you want to do anything seriously, do it as a hobby,’’ he asserted. “As soon as it becomes your profession, a degree of compromise comes in.’’

Despite critical success in Australia, winning three Australian Film Institute awards from 18 AFI nominations, his compromise was in sourcing and securing finance and increasingly he was forced overseas. Self-taught and with a fierce sense of purpose and style, Cox was renowned for his big heart, his passion, and hatred of injustice.

He formed strong ties with leading actors including, David Wenham, Wendy Hughes, Julia Blake and Norman Kaye.

His film-essay The Remarkable Mr Kaye (2005) is a portrait of Kaye, who appeared in numerous films, including Man of Flowers (1983), along with My First Wife (1984), Cox’s best known film.

In December 2009, he received a liver transplant that gave him a new perspective on life and a new partner, Rosie Raka, a transplant patient he met in hospital.