Family
Shirley was the only daughter, the second of five children. She grew up on the family farm east of the wheatbelt town of Pithara, Western Australia.
Her father, Dave Strickland, while a worker at Kalgoorlie in the goldfields of Western Australia, Australia was also an athlete. He was unable to compete in the 1900 Summer Olympics because he lacked the money for a trip to Paris. Instead, in 1900, he directed his efforts to the Stawell Gift 130-yard (120-m) foot-race, winning in 12 seconds off a handicap of 10 yards. His performance was considered to be as good as Stan Rowley's times, which won the Australian amateur sprint titles that season. (Rowley went on to win three bronze medals in the sprints at the 1900 Paris Olympics). Dave Strickland subsequently went on to play one senior game of Australian Rules football with Melbourne-based VFL team St Kilda in 1900 and six with WAFL club West Perth spread across the 1901 and 1909 seasons.
Her mother, Violet Edith Merry, was American-born with a British mining engineer father and a Norwegian mother.
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Famous quotes containing the word family:
“... a family I know ... bought an acre in the country on which to build a house. For many years, while they lacked the money to build, they visited the site regularly and picnicked on a knoll, the site’s most attractive feature. They liked so much to visualize themselves as always there, that when they finally built they put the house on the knoll. But then the knoll was gone. Somehow they had not realized they would destroy it and lose it by supplanting it with themselves.”
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“The family is the test of freedom; because the family is the only thing that the free man makes for himself and by himself.”
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