Start: 2016-11-17T22:30:00
End: 2016-11-17T23:45:00
Location: Alexandria Town Hall 73 Garden Street Alexandria (Nearest cross street Henderson Road)
Guests are also invited to gather following the services at Club Redfern (opposite Redfern station) for their own lunch, refreshments and sharing of stories.
A smaller more formal cremation service will be held for close friends at a later date once all statuary investigations & process regarding Ross’s estate are complete.
The organising committee request In lieu of flowers, contributions may be made to Waterloo Neighbourhood Advisory Board. They are Auspiced by Counterpoint Community Services Inc. Funds raised will be used to support tenant participation projects guided by the NAB.
We are still seeking tribute stories and media that could be used at the service and/or online please send them to info@counterpointcs.org.au
Should you need more information please call Mike or Laura at the Factory on 9698 9569
You can download the poster for the Memorial Service here.
Below are some more details from an email circulated by Counbterpoint Community Services on 21st October 2016:
Hello Everyone,
Condolence Book, Memories, and stories
We have been overwhelmed by the number of kind messages and
people coming into the Centre to give their condolences, there is no denying
that Ross Smith was a great Community advocate who will be greatly missed far
beyond Waterloo. We will continue to run the condolence book at the Factory so
if you have not already made an entry please drop into the Factory and do so.
We also ask for his friends to contribute by sending through
known stories of Ross, imagery, press clippings, digital media etc that we could
utilise at a service, online and in places like the South Sydney Herald who
also want to commemorate Ross. These can be emailed to us at info@counterpointcs.org.au or
handed into our offices at the Factory Community Centre or South Sydney
Community Aid.
Problems with locating Family
We know that you are all awaiting news about funeral
arrangements for Ross Smith and some of you have expressed concern about the
lack of information.
Counterpoint has for last three weeks been running a
skeleton staff team during one of our busiest periods and we apologise that we
have not been in contact about this earlier. In addition, We are no
closer to knowing what might happen as far as a funeral as the police have so
far been unable to locate any relatives.
We spoke to the Glebe Coroner’s office on Friday 14th
October and at that point, the post mortem had been complete, the formal report
would take some time yet. If relatives were known the body could be released
for a funeral but there is a minimum amount of time before the corner could
even consider releasing Ross to his friends for a funeral. In the absence of
family, the State of NSW may have to provide a very basic burial or cremation
service.
If you do have any information from your discussion with
Ross about his family, please let us know immediately so we can pass this on to
the investigating police officers.
A suggested Community Commemoration for Ross
Given the above Counterpoint, Staff team has met initially
with some of Ross’s known immediate friends we are proposing to have a public
celebration of Ross’s life early in November. It is proposed this
service will be a non-religious service however facilitated by his friends at
South Sydney Uniting church/SSH team in Waterloo.
We are acutely aware that Ross has a large network of
friends and that he had regular dealings with hundreds of people. We suspect
that many more will want to say something than there might be time for hence
the call for people to put down stories and memories that might be shared
either at a service or in other ways.
In preparing a Commemoration we are looking for a range of
speakers that will reflect the key groups the Ross had connections with and to
ask them to contribute to the organising and hosting of this celebration.
Some of those identified initially include:
•
Immediate family (if traced) and his personal friends
•
Community Centre networks he was involved in
•
Local and state wide resident groups
•
Australian Labor Party (state MP -local branch, local Government, and
Federal)
•
State and local Government civil service reps
•
Other volunteer groups – EG: REDWatch – South Sydney Herald , Odd Jobbers
etc
So if you are part of any of these known networks above, we
ask because of the enormity of most of them, which you discuss amongst your
self’s who may be the best contact that can liaise between us and that
particular network. Please let us know as soon as possible who the best person
for us to contact. For the ease of organising and good communication and given
the volume of potential people, it is essential that small amount ‘key’ people
are identified to work with us otherwise it will potentially become
unmanageable.
We do apologise in advance for any omissions in the above
initial list. It goes without saying we aware of the diversity of connections
Ross has and Counterpoint does not have or desire a monopoly on this celebration,
and individual networks could organise their own event if desired.
However, we are seeking as much collaboration on this as possible so we
can give his life the best memorial celebration possible.
We will announce the date, time and venue once we have put
together a representative working group to plan the event and secure an
appropriate place to host this in the city.
Please feel free to pass this on to networks who we may not
be aware of.
Thanking you for your ongoing support,
Best Regards
Mike and Team
Michael
M Shreenan
Executive
Officer
Counterpoint
Community Services INC
Base:
The Factory Community Centre
67
Raglan St Waterloo 2017
Ph:
9698 9569 Fax: 9310 4141
Mobile:
0413124615