"The good done by Dad lives indeed.
Here, for instance, the rendering of the walls, the varnish on the floors, our clothes, our cars, even our health is better in small, perhaps but certain measure, better because of the work of Dad in his professional career.
Career is only one incident of a man’s whole life. Like others, it is a telling incident. Through Dad’s career with NATA he sought and gained practical advance for the lives of people.
NATA people will tell you that, because they’ve told me, particularly recently, more particularly years ago, and when I told Dad those years ago about the penetratingly sincere affection NATA people had for Dad, he stopped, looked for the truth in my expression, and found; Dad briefly, so sweetly, wept. That was in 1973.
Another living incident, in 1969, was an early morning earth tremor. Noeline and I were awake with Dad in his bedroom and the sense he gave us was to relish the rare experience of contained natural cataclysm.
You see, Dad loved nature. In his twenties and teens, he’d trek weekends at the Blue Mountains bush. He took Mum and us on driving holidays – the Snowys, out west, the Darling Downs, Victoria – and we will always remember especially the wonder of millenia geological events and the keen regard to other phenomena he engendered in exact answers and observations.
Of course, it was the combination of nature and people in science that permitted Dad a satisfying combination of wonder and affection in his study and work. That’s as well why he spent those many hours on weekends in his beautiful garden. Dad said it was his only time outside, and he meant the immediate contact with a small but engaging part of nature. Didn’t it flourish under his wish.
The late Bill Barrett told me he admired Dad’s logic. On Sunday Philip Ruddock told me he admired Dad’s strength. Dom Cerneaz described Dad as father of an international system for the good of mankind.
He was, or is, our father, our grandfather, who could tell us our grandparents and great grandparents, aunts and uncles and cousins of them, and whence they came, and where they went, and Mum’s side, too, with affection and understanding.
So you see there is this surround that Dad liked and did good with, because appreciating the circumference identifies the centre and there was Mum.
Forty years of marriage, by their vows in the eyes of God, surely truly wed, love triumphant.
That’s the sweetness of this queer grief I feel. We’re sad Dad is gone, yet.
Yet with us from Dad until ever lives a strong, logical, practical smithmanship of love. It’s always been in the character of many fathers to bequeath their fatherhood, otherwise we couldn’t be here.
That’s the gift of God Our Father, whom we honour in this house.
Dad has been here a thousand times in this church. This is his last visit.
Just as Dad has left us all the richness of his spirit of love, I think our common plea to God is likely answered."
* Eulogy delivered by Frank's youngest son Anthony Monaghan at St Kevin's Catholic Church Eastwood August 1991
* Wedding picture, from left, Jo's sister Patricia Brennan (nee O'Neil), Maureen O'Neil later Hathaway, Frank's brother-in-law Brian Scott, the father of the bride James Burns O'Neil, the couple Frank and Jo Monaghan, bridesmaid Joan O'Neil later Slattery, Aunty Bridget & Bernard O'D, on the steps of St Paul's Dulwich Hill - 8 November 1941
*
Frank was awarded MBE in Australia in 1977 for service to technology
