Rod Humphries
| Rod Humphries | |
|---|---|
| Born | 18 September 1943 |
Rodney Dennis Humphries (born 18 September 1943) is an Australian-born author, newspaper/magazine journalist and television writer. Humphries began his writing career at the age of 17 as a general reporter for an Australian wire service. He became a sports journalist covering international events for major Australian dailies and wrote his first book, Lionel Rose: Australian at age 25. Humphries was also head writer and assistant producer of the Australian television show This is Your Life. Humphries moved permanently to the United States in 1977 when a tennis book he was commissioned to write in New York was followed by an offer from oilman and sports entrepreneur Lamar Hunt to join the staff of Dallas-based World Championship Tennis (WCT). He has had three books published in the United States, the most recent in 2013, Little League to the Major Leagues.
Rod Humphries is a direct descendant of a 26-year-old convict transported from Ireland to the British penal colony at Sydney Cove, New South Wales, Australia, in 1793, and of a 23-year-old Scottish "bounty immigrant" who arrived "free" in the colony in 1837. Patrick Humphrys, (the spelling would later be changed by government recorders) was sentenced to seven years penal servitude in Australia for stealing 200 weight of sheet lead in Dublin, Ireland. He spent 173 days on the convict ship The Boddingtons, which arrived on 7 August 1793, only five years after the First Fleet of convicts to Australia established the country as a British colony. After completing his sentence, Patrick was granted permission in 1801 to join the British Army in Australia, and served for 22 years and 195 days. On 28 February 1802, Patrick married Irish immigrant, Catherine McMahon (née Mooney), the widow of one of Patrick's fellow soldiers, Terrence McMahon, a convict ship guard who drowned in Sydney Harbour on 7 September 1801. Humphries' maternal great great grandfather, Scottish carpenter and cabinet maker John David Farquhar, received a bounty of 10 pounds from the government to migrate to Australia which desperately needed tradesmen for the colony. Farquhar arrived on The City of Edinburgh on 31 August 1837, leaving behind legal problems associated with a paternity suit.
Rod Humphries was born to Jack and Mavis Humphries (née Farquhar) in Paddington, Sydney, Australia, at a time the Australian government officially commemorates as the Battle for Australia (1942–43) of World War II. His sister Gae Denise Butler was born in 1947. Humphries’ maternal grandfather, Norman Farquhar, 52, who enlisted as a deputy senior air raid warden in Sydney, was buried alive on 12 October 1942 when a military trench he was digging in preparation for a possible Japanese invasion caved in during heavy rain. A shell from a Japanese two-man midget submarine hit outside the crowded Humphries' tenement in east Sydney on 8 June 1942, knocking Humphries’ mother Mavis semi-conscious, breaking windows, the front door, and weakening upstairs floor boards. Humphries’ uncle, Bob Humphries, who joined the military at 17, was captured by the Japanese Army as it swept through Malaya and Singapore and spent the rest of the war in the Changi Japanese prisoner-of-war camp. His father Jack Humphries fought in the jungles of New Guinea, just 100 miles north of Australia, contracting malaria that recurred for years after the war. Jack Humphries, who also trained American soldiers in jungle warfare as part of the Pacific campaign, led the march and took the official salute for the Australian Forces at the last Anzac Day in Wewak, New Guinea, in 1973 prior to New Guinea's independence from Australia.
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