Message for us all in Blair Hodges’ passing
The late Blair Hodges at his best, flying his Cessna 210, over the blue waters of Inverloch and Bass Coast. PROUD of his Leongatha heritage, throughout his life, the late Blair Hodges of Inverloch, will go down as one of the town’s most successful...
PROUD of his Leongatha heritage, throughout his life, the late Blair Hodges of Inverloch, will go down as one of the town’s most successful sons, especially where the business of real estate and property development is concerned.
But little is known of Blair’s philanthropic initiatives.
That’s the way he wanted it.
However, given the circumstances surrounding the illness that ultimately took his life, at age 72, on Monday, November 28, his friend and close confident, Alan Brown AM, revealed details of his last and greatest gesture at a memorial service in Leongatha’s St Peter’s Anglican Church last Friday.
Delivering the eulogy for his dear friend, Mr Brown described Blair as an “extraordinarily generous person without fanfare” noting that he had recently provided a substantial bequest, allocating enough trust funds, within the Epworth Medical Foundation, to provide an annual scholarship for an oncologist, radiologist, scientist or other medical practitioner to travel overseas, to a significant teaching hospital or research institution to enhance their own skills in caring for cancer patients at the health service.
The exact amount given is not known, only that it was “a large amount of money”, producing enough interest to provide a scholarship each year, in perpetuity.
A stickler for regular health checks, maintaining a good diet and getting regular exercise, especially on long walks, Blair is one of those whose bowel cancer diagnosis was delayed, likely crucially, by upwards of five months in 2021, at the height of the pandemic, when such procedures were considered elective.
By the time he was ultimately diagnosed in August last year, the damage was done.
Family members have stressed that Blair never wanted to play the victim card, instead putting all his energies into treatment, but he did stress the importance of participation in the National Bowel Cancer Screening Program and getting regular health checks.
At the height of the pandemic, the numbers of cancer patients presenting to medical clinics plunged 40 per cent, and while the numbers who received delayed diagnosis is not known, authorities have acknowledged the impact is “likely to be devastating” and even “life-threatening” for some.
Blair William Hodges was born at the Korumburra Hospital on February 19, 1950, the son of Marie and Reg Hodges, a former World War 2 wing commander with the RAAF. The couple had moved to Leongatha from Mildura in 1946 to take over the Leongatha Ford dealership, located across the road from the church in McCartin Street.
Tragedy was to strike the family of four children in 1956 when Blair’s sister Lee died of rheumatic fever age 17.
Blair attended the Leongatha Primary School and Leongatha High School where it bemused his mates, that while they sat down to paper-bag lunches of Vegemite and cheese sandwiches, Blair simply sauntered across the road to the family home, on the corner of Ogilvy and McDonald streets, for a sit-down lunch.
His working life started with a part-time at Dalgety’s in Leongatha, while he was still at school, converted into a full-time job later. He pursued a commercial pilot’s licence in Melbourne, at the same time working in the Federal Hotel, and ultimately returned home taking a sales job with the successful Kelly Brothers whitegoods, furniture and electrical store in town where he worked for the manager and later colleague and friend, Titch Redmond, before taking up the manager’s position at Wonthaggi.
He met his wife of 50 years Lyne, an administration officer at the Korumburra Hospital, at the Meeniyan dance and the couple were married in 1972.
After two years at Kelly Brothers in Wonthaggi, he was offered a partnership in a new real estate agency, PBE Inverloch, working with another local real estate legend, Denis Ginn for two years, and the rest, as they say is history.
Blair ultimately set up his own real estate business, Southcoast, with offices in Wonthaggi, Cowes, Leongatha, Korumburra, Mirboo North, Venus Bay and Inverloch, later branching out into property development, especially providing new residential land in Bass Coast and South Gippsland, where he and Lyne reveled in a partnership with two trusted friends, Trevor Bowler and Tony Zoanetti.
Along the way, Blair continued to enjoy flying his own plane, Blair loved nothing more than heading off with Lyne for a few days in Merimbula, and landing back at home on the airstrip he’d established on his farming property just outside Inverloch. The pair also enjoyed overseas and interstate travel.
In an emotional moment, Woorayl Air Services principal Barry Foster flew Blair’s retractable gear, Cessna 210, one last time, over the Leongatha Cemetery last Thursday during the interment.
There’s much more you could say about a life lived to the fullest by “a remarkable man” but it’s enough to say that his legacy will go on.
