Fay Wheatley's face should be very familiar to many Lower Mountains residents, everyone from school students to nursing home residents to veterans, swimmers and netball players.
For her extensive and widespread volunteering and service to veterans and the community over more than 50 years, Mrs Wheatley has been awarded a medal of the Order of Australia (OAM).
An excited Mrs Wheatley, who confessed she was in "shock" when she received the Governor General's email, said she felt she was born to volunteer.
"I began collecting eggs at nine years old for the hospitals, wrapping them in newspaper and packing them into shoeboxes to take to the school to raise money for the hospital," she said.
At 11, the family held backyard concerts to raise money for the Deaf and Blind Society.
A chance meeting on a tram with a female air force member led her to enlist at the age of 18. She was posted to Penrith barracks (where the Joan Sutherland complex now is) and travelled to Glenbrook RAAF base each day to work at Headquarters Home Command looking after leave passes and travel for the officers.
She was the first woman to fly in a Hercules to Melbourne - in those days women weren't allowed on board as there were no toilets on the aircraft.
She left the WRAAF after two-and-a-half years in 1960 - again, in a sign of the times, when women married they had to leave the forces - and moved to Springwood with her husband.
They built the home where she still lives, raising four children and now with 11 grandchildren and five great grandchildren.
In between, she has somehow found time to be a force in myriad community projects including:
- Helping to establish the Faulconbridge and Lower Mountains Netball Club;
- Volunteering with Springwood Amateur Swimming Club, later serving as president and then made a life member;
- Member of Springwood RSL for 38 years and Legacy for three years;
- Volunteer at Springwood Foundation Day;
- Volunteer at the canteen at Faulconbridge Public School;
- Helped raise funds for Faulconbridge Public School, the Girls and Boys Club, Springwood Hospital, Springwood Ambulance Station and Faulconbridge Fire Brigade; and
- Member, publicity officer, secretary, treasurer and later president for 25 years of the Blue Mountains Ex-Servicewomen's Association until it folded when numbers dwindled.
It was during those years that Mrs Wheatley became very involved in ex-service personnel issues.
For 25 years, she put memorabilia into shop windows each Remembrance and Anzac Days. She held the Sunset services each Anzac Day and supplied refreshments for both the Dawn and Sunset services.
"Each year I organised a special Anzac Service for the residents and patients at the Endeavour Nursing Home in Springwood. I organised entertainment at some of them with Jimmy Little and Johnny and Gay Ashcroft from Richmond.
"There were other services I helped run at the Church of England and Salvation Army."
Mrs Wheatley was employed at Springwood High School for 36 years as an administrative officer/food technology kitchen assistant, and was on the first school council committee.
She recalled volunteering at school presentations and other functions - "including cooking 16 dozen scones at times".
"I love helping people and I like selling things, like the badges [for Remembrance Day] - that's me. I think I was born to do it.
"I was just saying the other day [to a friend] I was always so delighted and enthused and excited when I did all those things and people appreciated it."
She wanted to say a "special thank you" to the emergency services, Church of England, Salvation Army, Endeavour Nursing Home and the shopkeepers of Springwood and surrounds for always putting her Anzac and Remembrance Day posters in their windows.
As she celebrated her 83rd birthday last week - typically spending it at a fundraising lunch - she reflected on her OAM: "I'm absolutely over the moon," she said.
