Keepsake: Gerry Coleman - Great Granddad's Utility Knife

An episode of the The State Library of WA podcast, hosted by StateLibraryWA, titled "Keepsake: Gerry Coleman - Great Granddad's Utility Knife" was published on October 18, 2024 and runs 3 minutes.

October 18, 2024 ·3m · The State Library of WA

0:00 / 0:00

Summary

magine the first time you ever see an airplane and it crashes into the ocean. Gerry's keepsake is his great-granddad's utility knife, which was gifted to him for saving the life of a world-renowned and revered Australian test pilot, Harry Hawker, in 1913.Harry Hawker was the chief test pilot for Sopwith Industries; this was only 11 years after the Wright brothers flew the first-ever successful airplane flight. Harry Hawker and his copilot (mechanic) Harry Cauper (also Australian) were test-flying a biplane over the Bay of Loughshinny in North County Dublin, Ireland, when they crashed into the sea. Gerry's great-granddad, Frank Ryan, was a local fisherman who rowed out and rescued them.No one in the community had ever seen an airplane. The next day, when a team tried to salvage the airplane, it was gone, except for one spark plug; the fascinated locals had stripped it for souvenirs. The local Lord of the Manor, Roger Palmer, gifted Frank a special engraved utility knife for his service. Gerry's father handed the utility knife down to him. Gerry's father inherited it from his mother (Gerry's grandmother), who got it from her dad, Frank, the hero fisherman.As part of the State Library of Western Australia’s exhibition Keepsake: Cherished Family Mementos from the Collection, we asked The Chin Wagon to create a podcast series collecting stories from members of the public about their family treasures and heirlooms. Scrabble boards, cookbooks, medals, fishing lures, trinkets and tools. Why are these items so important to the people that hold onto them?The Chin Wagon is a mobile recording studio designed to capture WA’s stories. Run by much-loved storytelling collective Barefaced Stories , The Chin Wagon provides a fun, cosy hearth for people to share their most treasured memories, tall tales or embarrassing spills. Andrea Gibbs interviewed seven members of the public in this mini podcast series. Each fascinating story is only 3 to 4 minutes long. Keepsake exhibition runs at the State Library of Western Australia until 4 February 2025. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Episode Description

magine the first time you ever see an airplane and it crashes into the ocean.

Gerry's keepsake is his great-granddad's utility knife, which was gifted to him for saving the life of a world-renowned and revered Australian test pilot, Harry Hawker, in 1913.

Harry Hawker was the chief test pilot for Sopwith Industries; this was only 11 years after the Wright brothers flew the first-ever successful airplane flight. Harry Hawker and his copilot (mechanic) Harry Cauper (also Australian) were test-flying a biplane over the Bay of Loughshinny in North County Dublin, Ireland, when they crashed into the sea. Gerry's great-granddad, Frank Ryan, was a local fisherman who rowed out and rescued them.

No one in the community had ever seen an airplane. The next day, when a team tried to salvage the airplane, it was gone, except for one spark plug; the fascinated locals had stripped it for souvenirs.

The local Lord of the Manor, Roger Palmer, gifted Frank a special engraved utility knife for his service. Gerry's father handed the utility knife down to him. Gerry's father inherited it from his mother (Gerry's grandmother), who got it from her dad, Frank, the hero fisherman.

As part of the State Library of Western Australia’s exhibition Keepsake: Cherished Family Mementos from the Collection, we asked The Chin Wagon to create a podcast series collecting stories from members of the public about their family treasures and heirlooms. Scrabble boards, cookbooks, medals, fishing lures, trinkets and tools. Why are these items so important to the people that hold onto them?

The Chin Wagon is a mobile recording studio designed to capture WA’s stories. Run by much-loved storytelling collective Barefaced Stories , The Chin Wagon provides a fun, cosy hearth for people to share their most treasured memories, tall tales or embarrassing spills. Andrea Gibbs interviewed seven members of the public in this mini podcast series. Each fascinating story is only 3 to 4 minutes long.

Keepsake exhibition runs at the State Library of Western Australia until 4 February 2025.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Share this episode

Similar Episodes

No similar episodes found.

Similar Podcasts

Re/Collecting Chapel Hill Chapel Hill Public Library Join Chapel Hill Public Library staff and community members as we uncover the untold histories of Chapel Hill. We seek to reckon with our past to figure out where we came from and why it matters for our shared future.Season one of Re/Collecting Chapel Hill was supported by grant funds from the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the federal Library Services and Technology Act as administered by the State Library of North Carolina, a division of the Department of Natural and Cultural Resources. Women, Gender, and Sex in the Ottoman World Ottoman History Podcast "Women, Gender, and Sex in the Ottoman World" is a series of podcasts that pulls together women’s history and the history of gender and sex in the Ottoman Empire and beyond. It explores the particular historical experiences of women and girls based on the conviction that returning the lives, experiences, and ideas of women to the historical record will change the way we look at historical periods and transformations at large. It also investigates the ways in which gender and sexuality can serve as useful categories of historical analysis (Scott, 1986) as they help us to better understand broad transformations in regimes of knowledge and politics, relations of property, forms of governance, and the nature of the state. (podcast image by Russian photographer Prokudin-Gorskiĭ of Armenian woman in Artvin ca. 1905-1915 courtesy of US Library of Congress http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/prk2000001172/) Check It Out! Sno-Isle Libraries A podcast from Sno-Isle Libraries for lifelong learners with inquiring minds. Check It Out! introduces the amazing people who work at, use and collaborate with the library district – and all of the services it offers to residents of Washington State’s Snohomish and Island counties. StoryCorps North Dakota Prairie Public StoryCorps recorded interviews in Bismarck from June 28-July 27, 2018, as part of its cross-country MobileBooth tour. Having collected more than 65,000 interviews from Americans in all 50 states, StoryCorps has gathered one of the largest single collection of human voices ever recorded. In the StoryCorps MobileBooth, two people are able to record a meaningful conversation with one another about who they are, what they’ve learned in life, and how they want to be remembered. A trained StoryCorps facilitator guides them through the interview process. With participant permission, a copy is archived at the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress for future generations to hear. Thank you to our local StoryCorps sponsors: Basin Electric Power Cooperative, Bismarck State College, and AARP of North Dakota.