Emeritus Professor Dr. John Cheffers, the four-game Carlton footballer who won a handsome international reputation as an academic, researcher, coach, author and public speaker, and who served as a Director of the Australian Institute of Sport, has died at the age of 76.
Born in Melbourne on May 13, 1936, John Theodore Francis Cheffers was schooled at Melbourne High and later graduated from the University of Melbourne. A son Andrew described Dr. Cheffers as “a man on a mission” in terms of his commitment to higher knowledge (and more of that later), but there can be no doubting his sporting prowess either.
Recruited to Carlton from Kew Amateurs, Dr. Cheffers was just 18 years and 338 days old when he won a call-up for his first senior match for the old dark Navy Blues, against North Melbourne at Princes Park in the opening round of 1955. That Saturday afternoon he booted two goals from centre half-forward, in what was a comprehensive 69-point rout of the Kangaroos.
Dr. Cheffers wore the No.32 recently vacated by the game’s record holder in the guernsey Bret Thornton. But he unfortunately succumbed to injury (“after a most promising debut” according to Carlton’s 1955 Annual Report) and managed just three more senior appearances in the dark Navy Blue.
Ken Hands, the Carlton captain of that year, recalled the robustly-built footballer in the No.32. “John was a fair-headed fellow, stood about 5’11, played at centre half-forward, but didn’t play a lot. Other than that I can’t tell you that much more,” Hands said.
Though he had dreamed of one day representing his country in the decathlon, Dr. Cheffers’ hopes were dashed when he tore the anterior cruciate ligament in his knee just weeks before the 1956 Summer Olympics in Melbourne. According to Andrew, “My father was trialling for the Olympics in the long jump, and on one particular jump his knee went the other way and his foot hit his head”.
“With such an injury back then, that was it, yet he actually did play football for a year afterwards at Box Hill, but because he had a limp he had to reinvent the way he played,” Andrew said. “One way to do that was to put the opposition off with his mind games because he couldn’t outrun them.”
Dr. Cheffers later officiated as a fitness advisor at Hawthorn. He also came to prominence as an athletics coach and one female athlete under his tutelage, Jean Roberts excelled as a Commonwealth Games silver and bronze medallist in the discus and shotput through the 1960s and ’70s.
In 1968, Dr. Cheffers was appointed head coach of what was a multi-racial athletics team in Zimbabwe (then known asRhodesia). The team was denied the opportunity to compete in the XIXth summer Olympiad by the Mexican Government and Dr. Cheffers, who strongly believed that politics ought not interfere with sport, penned the book “A Wilderness of Spite: Rhodesia Denied”.
The following year, Dr. Cheffers assumed the role as head athletic coach for the Papua New Guinea team, which he led to the third South Pacific Games in Port Moresby.
Upon receiving his Masters of Education in 1970 and his Doctorate of Education in 1973, both from Philadelphia’sTemple University, Dr. Cheffers relocated to Boston and was headquartered at Boston University. As an SED Professor Emeritus, he founded the BU School of Education’s Tuesday-Thursday Physical Education Program – a program recognized internationally for its unconventional teaching and learning environment.
Having advised the International Olympic Committee and the New England patriots on crowd control, Dr. Cheffers’ views on the issue were much-valued. He was once quoted as saying in The New York Times: “The love-hate relationship which spawns so much violence by fans is often ingrained in our youth by the dubious ethic that finishing first is the most important thing in sports. The result is that many fans are frustrated athletes who simultaneously love and hate the ‘heroes’ they watch in stadiums and arenas. When a team wins, a fan shouting, ‘We’re No. 1,’ really means, ‘I’m No. 1.’ ”
In 1984, Dr. Cheffers assumed the directorship of the Australian Institute of Sport from the inaugural Director Don Talbot and served in that capacity for what would prove an eventful two years. After Dr. Cheffers assumed control, a substantial number of AIS athletes and coaches were named in the Australian contingent for the Los Angeles Olympiad, with a total of 24 medals (four gold, eight silver and 12 bronze) hard won in competition.
Regrettably, the Labor Government’s autumn mini-budget of 1985 proved disappointing, prompting Dr. Cheffers to accuse the House of Representatives Expenditure Review Committee of a “lack of vision” and foul play”. That said, Dr. Cheffers continued to enthusiastically promote the AIS’s cause so that the Institute became a well-known peak body in the eyes of the Australian sporting public, and as Australian Sports Commission CEO Simon Hollingsworth recently observed, he had a marked impact on the AIS and the national high performance sport system during his time in Canberra.
“John was not just an excellent athlete and coach, he clearly was a student of sport and spent his life dedicated to helping others understand the value of sport and develop a passion for it,” Hollingsworth said.
Following his term at the AIS, Dr. Cheffers returned to academia and was elected President of AIESEP (Association Internationale des Ecoles Superieures d’Education Physique). He would serve in that capacity until 1998, which reflected the equally high regard that was held for him across the globe.
Steven Wright, who teaches at the University of New Hampshire, regarded Dr. Cheffers a visionary who “thought outside the box.”
“He had a different view of what physical education could and should be that differed from a lot of his contemporaries,” Wright told The Boston Globe. “He was all about being humanistic and being the best for kids.”
Recently admitted to Massachusetts General Hospital, Dr. Cheffers died in his sleep on October 28 whilst on a plane en route from San Francisco to Sydney with another of his sons, Mark. According to Andrew, “John was four hours out of San Francisco, sitting in first class and halfway to heaven”.
To the end, Dr. Cheffers followed his beloved Blues. “He was a dedicated Carlton supporter and just as dedicated in his hatred of Collingwood,” Andrew said.
Dr. Cheffers is survived by his wife Margaret, sons Paul, Mark and Andrew, daughter Leigh, their spouses and 17 grandchildren. He was buried at Murrumbateman Cemetery in New South Wales on November 5 and a memorial is planned for Endicott College, Massachusetts, in the New Year.
Dr John Cheffers.
The following is an edited version of Dr. Cheffers’ eulogy, recently delivered by his son Mark, which has kindly been made available by the Cheffers family for publication here.
“To begin with, I wanted to relay a story about Dad that I just heard recently. It is about a Melbourne University graduate who was apprenticing his new career as a teacher.
It was his first day as a student teacher and as such was relegated to the back of the classroom under the tutelage of a master teacher. Much to his surprise, this master teacher spent much of his time using a leather strap to routinely smack the young students. They were all terrified.
At some point after watching one of the kids take a particularly nasty belt, this young student teacher stepped forward and took the strap from the master teacher’s hand, refusing after a boisterous exchange to give it back to him. Following this, the master teacher stormed out of the room to the Headmaster’s office to have this young teacher fired for his insolence.
Years of education and commitment had led Dad to this place, and there he was, ready to let it all go for the sake of protecting these students.
Thirty minutes later, the Headmaster came into the classroom and offered the student teacher the job. The Headmaster had not understood what had taken place in that classroom until revealed by the young teacher. The master teacher had been fired and the student teacher was my father.
Now I mention this story because it gives some insight into the man who would later become a tireless advocate for the advancement of higher knowledge in teacher education, women’s place in sports, minorities of all stripes, sports interaction for the disabled, the utilization of sports to enhance the place of third world countries . . . and a loyal friend to so many people around the world.
One of his favourite admonitions to me as I would leave the house as a young man was to always seek to ‘push back the barriers of darkness’. This was an apt saying for his life. He was always trying to push back the barriers of darkness; in sports education, academia and life in general. And one of his other favourite quotes was ‘What then says Plato’s ghost?’, from a Yeats poem you will hear later. This poem takes each point in time that one seems to have been successful and asks ‘What then?’ – you are here, time is short and God has allowed you to stay a bit longer, so what now?’. This was a life’s cause for him, to never stop trying to contribute to the world, no matter his physical state.
So as we consider his life and contribution to the world, what happened to the young teacher? What was his life’s work and passion? Let me give you a few numbers, all of which do not add up to who he was but are instructive nonetheless.
As compiled by my always loyal and dedicated mother, much of which she helped produce, he published 18 books, wrote 42 chapters for books, had 55 articles accepted for publication in scholarly journals and wrote hundreds of articles for daily press publications. In addition, he gave 22 major speeches worldwide, participated in 29 distinguished speakers series, spoke at countless other venues including more than 100 places as the Executive Director of the Institute of Sport. Finally, he prepared five special reports for the International Olympic Committee, had been appointed by five countries including Australia and the United States to assist with Olympic coaching and undertook over 146 international teaching and coaching appointments.
As many of you know, he was busy. He spent 30-plus years at Boston University, retiring as a full professor with the honorary title of Professor Emeritus. He spent almost 20 years as the president of the most prestigious international organization in sports education in the world (AIESEP), retiring from that position with the honour title President Emeritus.
Yes, he was a true ambassador for Australia, having logged by my count more than one million miles in the air. And let me add, I cannot think of a more appropriate way for him to pass into the next world than on a United Flight, in first class, on his way back to Australia, to his family and his home in Murrumbateman.
I think he was looking forward to growling about how badly his old team Carlton had played, or of how his other club Hawthorn, at which he was once head trainer, had fared in the Grand Final. I could go on, but most of you don’t remember him in that way. Most of us remember him as the always irrepressible, gregarious, positive, innovative, loyal and larger than life man that he was. He had a gift for teaching, communication and moving hearts.
He was loyal to a fault and always loved the underdog. I mean, what kind of person in his right mind would take on the role of chief coach in athletics for countries like Papua New Guinea and the Rhodesia? In the 1970s and 80s, who would have taken on the role of fighting the scourge that steroids had become to sports and sportsmanship? I can remember asking him one time about his passion to rid sports of steroids and he simply said to me, ‘Try finding a Russian medallist of a decade ago who is still alive’. What man in the 1960s would have taken on the role of head coach of a women’s track and field team in Victoria? So much of his life was dedicated to advancing the prestige and honour of women in sports, not in a theoretical sense, but in a hands-on way in the trenches. And what man would have moved a major university to allow him to integrate on-site teaching to include both children from the poorest districts in Boston as well as children from the Perkins School for the Blind?
As I look around, I see many of his friends who knew him from each of these aspects of his life. That is why yo are here and again speaking for my family, and the sometimes crusty but always irrepressible old bastard who has left us, I thank you.”