Ted Cordner, who died on 4 March 1996, aged seventy-seven, was most widely known as the eldest of four brothers who played football for Melbourne in the Victorian Football League (VFL). His father and uncle had both played League football for Melbourne and for Melbourne University in the early years of the century. Ted played fifty-three games between 1941 and 1946. With his brother Donald, he was a member of the Melbourne Premiership team of 1941, and he represented the VFL against South Australia in 1946. He took the field with his brothers Donald and Denis in one game in 1943, a family record equalled but not bettered until a few years ago. It was thought by many observers that had there been a Brownlow Medal in 1943 he would have been a strong contender.

He took out his MB BS at Melbourne University in 1942, then joined the Navy and the Second Word War. He served as Medical Officer on HMAS Vendetta in the Pacific for nine months before being seconded to the Royal Navy in which he served both in England and in the Pacific. After the War he completed his MD and his Membership of the Royal Australasian College of Physicians, being elevated to FRACP in 1975. He also became a Fellow the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners. He returned to general practice in Greensborough while also becoming Assistant Physician and then Honorary Senior Clinical Physician at the Alfred Hospital, a position he held for 28 years. From 1960 to 1975 he was also Assistant Physician at the Austin Hospital. In 1966 he had a three-month stint as a medical specialist with an Australian Civilian Surgical Team at Bien Hoa in Vietnam. [see Chiron, v. 2, n. 4, 1991, p 65].

Apart from his hospital residency and three years in war service, Ted lived his whole adult life in Ashmead, the family home built by his parents in the outer Melbourne suburb of Greensborough, where he was in general medical practice right up until a few months before his death.

Ted was much involved in local affairs in Greensborough. For 40 years he was one of the two medical representatives on the Diamond Valley Community Hospital Board. He was Vicar’s Churchwarden at All Saints’ Greensborough from 1952 to 1973; he sang in the choir with tenor voice which, though creditable, was not as fine as his father’s; and he was involved in the building of the new Anglican church complex in Greensborough in 1967. In recent years he also became involved in the local Regional Council of the Ageing. He was playing President of the Greensborough Football Club for nine years, not hanging up his football boots until he was forty-two.

Love of sport was a theme of Ted’s life. An able left-arm medium-fast bowler, Ted played cricket for Melbourne University in the District competition, and later played with the Old Melburnians for 26 years in the MCC Club Elevens competition. His lawn tennis strokes, forged in hot boyhood competition with his brothers, had something of the quality of the Geebung Club’s polo-playing – little science but a lot of dash. For the last twenty-five years or so, Ted was also a keen exponent of Royal Tennis. Although lazy on the football training track, like his brothers, he could enjoy exercise which was not in the pursuit of a ball and in 1976 walked from Kathmandu to the Everest Base Camp.

As Greensborough grew from the country hamlet of Ted’s childhood to a busy suburb, Ashmead remained an unchanging centre of warm hospitality. Visitors could be sure of enjoying Ted’s excellent cellar, often after tennis on the family court and with the roast which Anne seemed always to have ready in the oven. To Ted at Ashmead I owe my own introduction to Havana cigars and excellent cognac. Such largesse was always accompanied by conversation both robust and challenging. Those present were expected to be able to give an account of themselves and to participate in discussion, at the same time serious and passionate, about all manner of things. There were no barriers of age or gender: not only Ted’s children but also very many friends were drawn into this large circle. Some households seem to be both a centre of social gravity and a fount of vital energy for those around them. Ashmead has been one such, and, together with Anne, Ted was the chief source of its being so.

Ted Cordner had many qualities which compelled the admiration of those who knew him: great vigour of mind and body; generosity both of spirit and in things material; intellectual curiosity and acuteness which was always responsive to intelligent challenge; a manner which was open, direct and warm, (at times hot, especially in the face of even slightly leftist political views); and an unrehearsed and unaffected elegance of demeanour. But in addition to all of theses qualities, there was in him a passionate vitality, a great love of life, which animated all that he did and was. The effect of this was remarkable presence and impact, which summoned not only the admiration of others, but also their love. It is, and will be, most keenly missed.

Ted’s bond with his three brothers was always very strong. In later years, despite his many achievements and wide range of interests, Ted’s main focus increasingly became his immediate and his wider family. His burgeoning tribe of grandchildren were a source of delight to him. Although Ted’s imposing physique had in recent years become thinner and somewhat bowed – in good part the legacy of numerous operations – he remained physically active until the last few months of his final illness. Even while hospitalised in the last weeks of his life, he never lost his vital sharpness of observation and wit, or his gratitude that his family could be about him. His wife Anne, and their six children survived him.