James Franklin LAWSON OBE [6820] ³⁵⁰⁷

  General Notes:

LAWSON James Franklin : Service Number - O3132 : Date of Birth - 08/02/1913 : Place of Birth - Warracknabeal, VIC : Conflict - WW2 National Archives of Australia

https://www.awm.gov.au/collection/R1565586
Honors and Awards (Recommendation)
James Franklin Lawson
Name: Lawson, James Franklin
Award: O.B.E. Reg. No. 1059 Rank W/Cdr. Service R.A.A.F.
Recommended by Governor General on 29/3/44
Promulgated in London Gazette on 16/644
Promulgated in Commonwealth of Australia Gazette on 22/6/44 G.H. File R.A.A.F. O/A 25
Citation (G.H.File RAAF O/A 25 Distinguished service and devotion to duty N.Western A.
Insignia received from London 19/1/45 PN London 35/5/45 G.H.File L/40
Insignia presented by The Governor General, at Government House, Melbourne on 10/5/45 G.H. file Melbourne/5
Address of recipient on presentation date: Rupanyup, Victoria.
Australian War Memorial

http://www.rafcommands.com/
1944-06-13OBE(M)Wg CdrJames Franklin LAWSON (1059)HQ NW RAAF
The KING has been graciously pleased, on the advice of His Majesty's Australian Ministers, to give orders for the following appointments to the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire, in recognition of conspicuous service1 in operations against the Japanese London Gazette No. 36566, Dated 1944-06-13

The Sydney Morning Herald (NSW : 1842 - 1954) View title info Thu 27 Jul 1950 Page 10
Sydney's Talking About
* INFLUX of eligible bachelors from Melbourne and Tasmania for the Hughes-Ditchfield wedding on Saturday. Wing
Commander Jim Lawson (Melbourne), John Steer, James Ramsay, and Rod O'Connor, all of Tasmania, will brighten the local scene.

The Mail (Adelaide, SA : 1912 - 1954) View title info Sat 30 Dec 1950 Page 25
To have new best man
Wing Commander Jim Lawson, who was to have been best man at the wedding on Thursday of Cynthia Ponder and Keith Nicol, has been recalled to England, leaving on Friday, and won't be able to come from Melbourne for the wedding.
Dr. Dick Pellew will take his place.

The wedding will be held in Scots Church, North terrace. Cynthia is the daughter of Mr. Gilbert Ponder, of Walkrtrville. and Keith is the son of Mr. and Mrs Walter Nicol, of Unley Park. Keith came from Melbourne, where he is working, last week to spend Christmas with his parents. Cynthia's bridesmaid, Valda Fisher, who is secretary of the Victorian Dental Board, will arrive from Melbourne on Wednesday for the wedding. The newly-weds will live near Melbourne

The Australian Women's Weekly (1933 - 1982) Sat 14 Jun 1947 Page 24
Intimate Jottings

NEWS of Australian colony in London pops into my letter-box via Lancastrian only three days after being written - so different from the old sea mail days when we kept track of our friends in the past tense instead of in the present.
Hear the Percy Spenders, who arrive in Orion, say they haven't yet been worried by rationing. This tent surprising as, preparatory to taking off for Holland, Belgium, Spain, and possibly Greece, they stay at Grosvenor house, Park Lane which still manages to produce a pretty good meal.

While Percy visits Germany, Jean Spender plans to stay in Paris. On June 25 they sail for America in Good Queen Liz, returning to Sydney by air in August.
. . .
FOOD parcels from home raided to provide supper titbits for gathering of Australians at Joan Lyttle's Kensington flat. The social season for Australians in England is not any particular time, like August in Scotland-it's every time a batch of food parcels arrives. Then there is a great pooling of resources.

GUESTS at Joan's party include Ruth Sanger, of Armidale (suntanned from a recent Switzerland jaunt), who is studying pathology at Lister Institute; Dr. Marie Hill, of Pennant Hills, who has just begun duty as assistant anaesthetist at Luton and Dunstable Hospital; Peter Walcott, of Lindfield, and Jim Lawson, R.A.A.F., of Melbourne.

Peter Walcott is returning in the Asturias after studying legal procedure at the Houses of Parliament for the past year. Peter and Jim, who've been sharing a flat in London, write that it's amazing what can be run up from a tin of Australian cheese and some toast for a snack.
http://angustrumble.blogspot.com/2008/12/jim-lawson.html
The Tumbrel Diaries

Wednesday, December 24, 2008
Jim Lawson

Wing Commander James Franklin Lawson, O.B.E. (1913- 2003) was born at Warracknabeal in Victoria on February 8, 1913.

His father was commissioned in the Army in 1912, and fought in World War I in the 4th Light Horse Regiment of the A.I.F. Major Lawson led the famous cavalry charge at Beersheba in October 1918, was mentioned in despatches and awarded the D.S.O., although he was in fact recommended for the Victoria Cross.

Jim went to Ballarat Grammar School, where he did very well and was primed to metricmatriculatetudy law at university. However, the onset of the Great Depression made it necessary for him to abandon that plan and leave school early.
Instead, with characteristic determination he studied accountancy by correspondence and, not surprisingly, came top of the state. Jim then worked as an accountant for various local councils in country Victoria, and for the City of Hawthorn in the eastern suburbs of Melbourne.

In 1935, the Royal Australian Air Force advertised for officer recruits. Jim was one of only five successful applicants, something that must have made his mother and father very proud. He rose rapidly in the R.A.A.F., in due course attaining the rank of Group Captain.

During World War II, Jim was involved in the Empire Air Training Scheme, which made such a crucial contribution to allied victory, and in 1943 served on the staff of the R.A.A.F. Allied Air Liaison Office in Ottawa, where he played tennis with Princess Juliana of the Netherlands, among other distinguished V.I.P.s temporarily sheltering at Rideau Hall.

The journey by ship to Canada was dangerous, and the risk of encountering enemy ships and submarines in the Pacific Ocean was high. In June 1944, with the rank of Wing Commander (N.W. area H.Q.), he was made an officer in the military division of the Order of the British Empire.

In November 1958, Jim left the Department of Air and the R.A.A.F., and joined Hawker Siddeley, the large British firm of aeronautical engineers and defence contractors. He worked for Hawker in Australia, and in England.

Earlier in the same year, Jim met John Borthwick in Melbourne. In about 1963, Jim and John travelled extensively in England, Ireland, France, and Greece.

Settling in England in the 1960s and 1970s, towards the end of which time John was working for the Wend End antique dealer Roy Barling, Jim and John lived variously in a sixteenth-century thatched cottage at Welford-on-Avon, at a partly restored fortified castle in Hunsdon, a flat in Porchester Place, Mayfair, a cottage near Cirencester in the Cotswolds, and, later on, above another antique business (called Grace and Favour) which John ran for Lady Joseph in Bute Street, South Kensington. At times, Jim assisted Barling with his considerable accounting skills.
In the 1980s, when semi-retired, they spent the northern winter months in Cannes, in the south of France, where after several years Jim's appalling French showed no signs of improvement.

They returned to Australia in 1969, purchased and ran a motel and restaurant in Coffs harbor, aiming to bring French Provencal cookery to the northern coast of New South Wales.

When in England or France, Jim and John entertained many visiting Australians with supreme generosity, including many members of both their families. We remember those visits, which were frequently hilarious, with immense gratitude.
John's nephew, my brother Simon, recalls Jim enthusiastically suggesting to him and Mary Ann, on the occasion of their first visit to London in 1984, that they attend a soccer friendly between Tottenham Hotspur and Liverpool at White Hart Lane. John was somewhat less enthusiastic.

In any event, during the game a riot took place, and Simon and Mary Ann barely escaped with their lives. Jim was unapologetic, observing cheerfully that this would for them be an unforgettable experience of daily life in the capital.

Jim was naturally gregarious and, at other times, to the mortification of young or merely shy companions, he did not hesitate to strike up conversations with complete strangers at the next table, wave his handkerchief to people in the theater, stop London traffic by holding out his walking stick, and sing songs.
Jim and John finally returned to Australia in 1988, and lived for some years in Sydney and Melbourne.

In 1996, Jim entered the War Veterans' Home at Myrtle Bank (in Adelaide) as a patient and, though frail, remained mentally alert. No-one who knew them in happier times can easily forget the great care and devotion with which John looked after Jim in those last years, and with which Jim's niece, Ann Pietsch, looked after both of them in Adelaide.

Jim Lawson died peacefully on Saturday morning, March 29, 2003. John died in Melbourne three years later.
Posted by Angus Trumble at 3:47 PM
Labels: John Malcolm Borthwick, WCDR James F. Lawson O.B.E.
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