Time to remember times of yesteryear.
Gordon Moyes who crossed my path several times during my bookselling career wrote this in 2007:
These people in spite of all that had happened to them had become very able people. At my first chapel in the city of the first Thursday in February in 1979 I met a very remarkable blind lady by the name of Sue Newman. Sue was in her 20s. She was totally blind and walked with a long white cane. She also suffered very badly from epileptic seizures. However with my experience of epilepsy this was not going to be a problem. Soon we became close friends and she attended every church service each week. I remember inviting Sue to take part in services and to read from her Braille bible and then one night in July 1979 I was doing a special “Church in a Theatre” which was going to be telecast at the ABC network. I was going to interview her about her life and faith.
Sue was born blind. Her eyes which portrayed the white part of the eyeball when her eyelids were open had never been functional at all. She never blamed God for her blindness, nor did she believed she had missed out, being born blind. She said to me in that television interview I would rather be born blind than to have lost my sight because I feel I would have lost out so much more if I had gone blind later.
Sue had not missed out on much of the 20 years or so of life. She was very active in bushcraft and had worked for the Duke of Edinburgh award. She was also very active in athletics particularly running. She used to go mountain climbing in the Blue Mountains and other places and enjoyed surfing both in the pool and in the surf. She went on an expedition on one occasion through the Blue Mountains without a great deal of help. There were times when climbing a steep rock face she needed people to call out to her where to put her feet but with that help she was able to successfully scale a very forbidding cliff face. During her time she also spent a week nursing small children in a children’s home. She set herself the task of winning the Duke of Edinburgh top award and over a period of years completed all that was necessary to win her bronze award and then her silver award and finally the Governor General of Australia presented her with a gold Duke of Edinburgh award.
Eventually she went to Buckingham Palace and received a gold award from the Duke of Edinburgh himself. The Duke was greatly impressed with Sue’s courage and personal commitment to overcoming.
It was while she was with us at Wesley Mission that she joined helping some young people struggling with drug addiction in the inner city of Sydney. She worked with some of my staff in reaching young people who constantly pitied themselves and gave themselves every excuse for their abuse of drugs. She did a training course with us and was in a class that I taught every week through our Lifeline.
After that she was involved in helping latchkey children in the inner suburban areas. At the same time she did a bible college course to equip herself. Never once did sue complain about the fact that she was totally blind. In 1980 Rev Fred Nile appointed Sue as an office worker and administrator for the International year for disabled people. This was part of the excellent work that he was doing through his new organisation, “Festival of Light”. Sue used a Braille typewriter and other special equipment. She wrote the International Year for Disabled Peoples Beatitudes which were found by many to be a real blessing.
There was a great loss to us all when Sue took an epileptic seizure and died on Tuesday the 14th of July in 1981 at just 27 years of age. We held a service of remembrance for her at the chapel in the city which crowded out Wesley Chapel. A second service of Praise and Thanksgiving was held at St Andrews Cathedral where Rev Fred Nile gave the eulogy. The Festival of Lights subsequently named an award in honour of Sue, the Sue Newman Award—for services to humanity. The first winner of that received it here in Sydney. And that winner was Mother Teresa of Calcutta. Sue Newman was one of those remarkable overcomers.
I was privileged to meet Mother in 1981:
