- Author
- Bradford, John
- Subjects
- History - WW2
- Tags
-
- RAN Ships
- HMAS Canberra I
- Publication
- March 1997 edition of the Naval Historical Review (all rights reserved)
Well, that is the way it worked out. Now, years and years passed. I was retired from the Navy and was with John Hancock as a vice president from there, and one day our president at lunch remarked about the very interesting international legal seminar that was going on over at Harvard. And he said that morning he had heard a talk given by the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Australia. I pricked up my ears right away and I said: “Judge Elliott, is Sir Owen Dixon here?’ And he said: “Yes”.
So when I got down to my office, I called up the Harvard Law School where they were holding this thing and said I wondered how I could get in touch with Sir Owen Dixon. Well, the word came back that he would call me back in about 20 minutes. He did, and I told him I would like very much to come over and see him. I told him who I was, and he remembered me right away.
He said, “I have something better. Why don’t you and Mrs McCrea join Lady Dixon and me at 5.00 o’clock this afternoon for tea?”
They had quartered him in some fancy house over there at Harvard. I have forgotten what the name of it was now. So that’s the way it worked out. And when Estelle (my wife who has now passed on, of course, some time ago) and I went over there promptly at 5.00 o’clock, he hadn’t shown up. He was about 10 or 15 minutes late getting in there. But Lady Dixon sat there, and she was all filled with Australia and about the Canberra and everything. And she said, “Often people will say to me, `Lady Dixon, how about your family?'”.
And she said, “My reply is always this: Two sons, two daughters and a heavy cruiser’.
Q: That’s beautiful.
But getting back to FDR he was the fellow who though about that, and I think it was a fine touch.