Wilma Radford 1912-2005.(Obituaries)(Obituary)

Wilma Radford was born at Warragul, Victoria on 31st July 1912 and died in Sydney on 27th August 2005 after a short illness. She was the fourth child of Walter and Emily Radford, and she had two older brothers, an older sister and a younger sister. The family moved to Sydney when the children were small because their father, who was a metallurgist and industrial chemist, had obtained work there. In the mid-1920s their father became ill and was unable to work for several years and without any social services safety nets in those days, the family was in difficult financial straits. Wilma's father died in 1928; like Wilma's, her mother's life was long--she died in 1980 at the age of 92 years. Wilma attended the Sydney Girls' High School and in 1930 and 1931 attended Sydney Teachers College, after which she was awarded a 2A classification as a teacher and the Jones Medal. When she was appointed in 1932 to a position at the Public Library of New South Wales (now the State Library), her teaching career may have seemed to be at an early end, but that was to be far from the case.

Wilma's career in the Public Library was punctuated with work in several of the libraries to which staff from the Public Library were posted. In 1932 she was the Librarian of the Armidale Teachers' College, with posts at Sydney…