Patricia Ilhan speaks about raising four children in the wake of her husband John’s death
TEN years after her husband ‘Crazy John’ Ilhan’s unexpected death, Patricia Ilhan has opened up about raising four children on her own — and says he would be proud of how the family has rallied.
Inner South
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WHEN the kind, generous heart of her larger-than-life husband “Crazy John” Ilhan failed during a 6.30am walk one day in 2007, Patricia Ilhan had to do what every mother dreads — tell her children their dad wasn’t coming home.
Mrs Ilhan was suddenly a single mum of four kids under 10. There was no warning of John’s arterial disease. He seemed a healthy 42-year-old.
In October it will be 10 years since the mobile phone king’s death. While they still live in the same beachfront Brighton home and have lifelong financial security from the phone empire, Mrs Ilhan said wealth was not the foundation her family was built on.
During the hellish days after John’s death in 2007, she struggled to “keep everything normal”.
“My son was only 10 months old, the girls were 9, 8 and 6. They were so little,” she said.
“I couldn’t just fall in a heap because I was now in charge, and you have to have one person who’s strong.”
Back then, while “privileged” to be able to stay home with her children full-time and pay for extra help, she said her struggles were no different to those of any single mum.
“People might say ‘she had money’ … but children just want their mother. They’d lost their father,” Mrs Ilhan said.
“This is a very public house. The media were parked outside for two weeks — they even had a camera on the beach trying to look into the house.
“It took five minutes to get out when I had to go to the coroner’s office to identify his body.”
That December the family took their first new steps without John.
“We went to Portsea for two months and we had Christmas for the very first time,” Mrs Ilhan said.
“My husband was Muslim and we didn’t celebrate Christmas.
“The children had never seen a Christmas tree before, so we had a tree. I was raised Catholic and they’re still being raised Muslim, but I wanted them to experience both.
“That was wonderful and it did a lot to bring us closer together.”
That family dynamic continues to this day and drove Mrs Ilhan’s decision to sell the phone empire to Vodafone 12 months after John’s death.
“I was going to lose the children if I spent all my time in the business and I didn’t have the skill level he had,” she said.
Eldest daughter Yasmin, 19, is now at university in London, Hannah, 18, and Jaida, 16, are at secondary school and the family’s baby and only boy, Aydin, is 10.
“He gets a bit frustrated growing up in a house of women so that’s why I send him to (an all boys school),” Mrs Ilhan said.
“We do a family dinner every Sunday. I love that, I love sitting at the end of the table and seeing all my children,” she said.
“We usually go out to somewhere close by … Cucina & Co in Bay St, Brown Cow in Hampton St, lately it’s been White Rabbit in Church St.”
When each child turns 13 she takes them for a two-week holiday, and has pictures from the holiday bound into a keepsake book.
“I do like the fact that I’m the only decision-maker in this family. I like being the boss, and the money and decisions stop with me. My kids know if I say no, it’s no,” she said.
Mrs Ilhan said her expectations for her children to be self-sufficient were partly due to her own upbringing and successful career.
“I had this fabulous career when I left uni,” she said.
“I joined IBM and I travelled the world and I loved it. I joined Telstra as a corporate sales manager and that’s where I met my late husband. He was my client and I was his account manager.
“I was 29, financially independent and had already bought my second house by then.”
Both she and John were children of migrants who came to Australia “with nothing” and built their own fortunes — and she expects her children to follow suit.
“I want my children to grow up to be well adjusted and balanced and financially independent. And educated,” she said.
“I don’t expect them to rely on any money from their father and I.”
John’s legacy lived on in many ways, she said.
“This house — it’s all about him,” she said. “It’s the poor Muslim boy from Broadmeadows made good.”
An “Ilhan Lane” sign — a copy of the one named in John’s honour in the City of Moreland — overlooks her garden.
Third daughter Jaida’s severe tree nut allergy spurred John and Patricia to start the Australian Food Allergy Foundation.
Mrs Ilhan told of the shock of discovering Jaida’s life-threatening condition as a toddler.
“We were in a hotel. My husband had just put his hand into a jar of mixed nuts and eaten them … and, like you do with any two-year-old, he threw her on to the bed and kissed her all over her face. And she immediately swelled up like an alien and was unrecognisable.”
With barely any research done on food allergies at the time, the family waited 18 months to see a specialist, “and we felt that was just unacceptable”.
Jaida has suffered several life-threatening anaphylactic attacks, Mrs Ilhan said — including one at a family birthday party.
“I gave a tiny bite of one of the desserts, which I thought was nut-free, to Jaida,” she said.
“She immediately felt a tingling and itchiness in her throat. What happens then is that the throat starts to swell, swells right over and they die.
“Sandringham Hospital emergency is eight minutes away.
“I throw her in the car, we get halfway there, she says ‘I’m not going to make it’. So I stopped
and shot her up with the EpiPen. And I drove like a maniac down Beach Rd and up on the kerb outside the hospital.
“The staff were amazing. They wired her up, got her on steroids, antihistamines. She was scared.
At 16 you know you can die.”
That memory took Mrs Ilhan back to one of her loneliest moments.
“The first time I took Jaida to the Royal Children’s, I was really upset because John had just died,” she said.
“I was thinking, ‘he’s just died, you’re not going to die on me’.
“I was smoking in those days, and I’d go outside and have a cigarette and think ‘this is crap having to deal with this on my own’.
“Now I just see it as part of my responsibilities. And I think when your child’s sick you really are on your own.
“No one really understands, other than a mother.”
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