ALUMNI FOCUS
Fulfilling long-held ambitions: The Rush family story
Margaret Rush’s ambition to undertake university study was finally fulfilled in 1968, when she enrolled to study history at the new university. She joined her son, Chris, who had started a year earlier, with her other three children ultimately also studying at Macquarie.
“I grew up in the 1920s and 30s, which included the depression years. As we were relatively untouched by these events, I expected to go into science research at Sydney University following in the footsteps of my grandfather and great grandfather (who studied classics and law at Sydney),” she says.
However family fortunes changed, and with them her plans to attend university. Instead she studied teaching at the Teacher’s College on a scholarship, and later the war and raising a family intervened.
“My university aspirations had been thwarted, so you can imagine the excitement I felt at the prospect of being able to undertake tertiary studies when Macquarie University announced its establishment in 1964,” Mrs Rush says, adding that one of her forebears was John Dunmore Lang, the Scottish-born Australian Presbyterian minister, writer, politician and activist for whom the residential college is named.
“I did four years (part time) of undergraduate courses in a wide range of subjects and gained a BA, later undertaking postgraduate study to obtain an MA in history, philosophy and political studies.”
Her husband also received an MA in English, and several grandchildren have since studied at Macquarie.
“Interestingly, most of my grandchildren have taken up where I left off and gone into science,” she adds.
Mrs Rush is now a patron of the John and Joan Lincoln Society and has left a bequest to the University in her will.
“My family has a legacy of supporting education, and when my husband died in 1981, we established the Fred Rush Convocation Prize, which is awarded to a student for outstanding creative writing, in memory of him.
“Leaving a bequest to Macquarie is a natural extension of the longstanding relationship our family has had with the University.”
If you would like to leave a legacy to the University contact Anne Peedom on (02) 9850 1392.
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