Rodney Dennis Humphries (born 18 September 1943) is an Australian-born author, newspaper/magazine journalist and television writer. Humphries began his writing career at the age of 17 as a general reporter for an Australian wire service. He became a sports journalist covering international events for major Australian dailies and wrote his first book, Lionel Rose: Australian at age 25. Humphries was also head writer and assistant producer of the Australian television show This is Your Life. Humphries moved permanently to the United States in 1977 when a tennis book he was commissioned to write in New York was followed by an offer from oilman and sports entrepreneur Lamar Hunt to join the staff of Dallas-based World Championship Tennis (WCT). He has had three books published in the United States, the most recent in 2013, Little League to the Major Leagues.
Family origins and early life
Rod Humphries is a direct descendant of a 26-year-old convict transported from Ireland to the British penal colony at Sydney Cove, New South Wales, Australia, in 1793, and of a 23-year-old Scottish "bounty immigrant" who arrived "free" in the colony in 1837. Patrick Humphrys,Hall, Barbara. Of Infamous Character: The Convicts of the Boddingtons, Ireland to Botany Bay 1793. Irish Wattle, Sydney 2004. PP97-99 (the spelling would later be changed by government recorders) was sentenced to seven years penal servitude in Australia for stealing 200 weight of sheet lead in Dublin, Ireland. He spent 173 days on the convict ship The Boddingtons, which arrived on 7 August 1793, only five years after the First Fleet of convicts to Australia established the country as a British colony. After completing his sentence, Patrick was granted permission in 1801 to join the British Army in Australia, and served for 22 years and 195 days. On 28 February 1802, Patrick married Irish immigrant, Catherine McMahon (née Mooney), the widow of one of Patrick's fellow soldiers, Terrence McMahon, a convict ship guard who drowned in Sydney Harbour on 7 September 1801. Humphries' maternal great-great-grandfather, Scottish carpenter and cabinet maker John David Farquhar,Tamsitt, Mignon. The Farquhar Folio: The Story of John David Farquhar and Descendants. Southern Cross University, Lismore, Australia, 2003 received a bounty of 10 pounds from the government to migrate to Australia which desperately needed tradesmen for the colony. Farquhar arrived on The City of Edinburgh on 31 August 1837, leaving behind legal problems associated with a paternity suit.
Humphries was born to Jack and Mavis Humphries (née Farquhar) in Paddington, Sydney, Australia, at a time the Australian government officially commemorates as the Battle for Australia (1942–43)The Battle For Australia 1942–43 http://www.battleforaustralia.org.au/2897/Home/Battle for Australia http://www.pacificwar.org.au/Introduction_NatCouncil.html of World War II. His sister Gae Denise Butler was born in 1947. Humphries’ maternal grandfather, Norman Farquhar, 52, who enlisted as a deputy senior air raid warden in Sydney, was buried alive on 12 October 1942 when a military trench he was digging in preparation for a possible Japanese invasion caved in during heavy rain.Death of Norman Farquhar (Bondi Daily Newspaper, Sydney, Australia, 17 October 1942, page 2). A shell from a Japanese submarine hit outside the crowded Humphries' tenement in east Sydney on 8 June 1942,Japanese midget submarine attacks on Sydney, 1942. National Archives of Australia: http://recordsearch.naa.gov.au/SearchNRetrieve/Interface/DetailsReports/ItemDetail.aspx?Barcode=318205"Shell Tore Through Wall Above Bed". Sydney Morning Herald, 1942: http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-page1094045?zoomLevel=1&searchTerm=shell+that+exploded+Bellevue+Hill knocking Humphries’ mother Mavis semi-conscious, breaking windows, the front door, and weakening upstairs floor boards. Humphries’ uncle, Bob Humphries, who joined the military at 17, was captured by the Japanese Army as it swept through Malaya and Singapore and spent the rest of the war in the Changi Japanese prisoner-of-war camp. His father Jack Humphries fought in the jungles of New Guinea, just 100 miles north of Australia, contracting malaria that recurred for years after the war. Jack Humphries, who also trained American soldiers in jungle warfare as part of the Pacific campaign, led the march and took the official salute for the Australian Forces at the last Anzac Day in Wewak, New Guinea, in 1973"Our Last Anzac Day". Papua-New Guinea Post Courier, 26 April 1973, front page.The Last Anzac Day in Wewak, New Guinea, 1973 (Jack Humphries, White Over Green Newsletter, 2/4th Battalion Australian Army, Sydney, 1973) prior to New Guinea's independence from Australia.
While military fortifications were installed at Sydney Harbour and coastal beaches in an effort to thwart any attempt at a land invasion, and many fled the coastal cities for the safety of nearby mountains, the Humphries family stayed in Sydney and pooled resources. Three generations of the extended Humphries/Farquhar family hunkered down in an overcrowded, narrow, two-story, two-bedroom tenement with neither indoor toilet facilities nor refrigeration attached to a general store on the corner of Small and Fletcher Streets, Woollahra, East Sydney. While his father was at war, Humphries' father figure at the war-time home was his uncle George Smith, a former professional fighter in the Great Depression who had injuries from his boxing days which precluded him from serving in the military.
During the difficult wartime and post-war conditions, the Humphries family struggled to make ends meet and after the war supplemented its income by operating an illegal bookmaking business, providing horse race gambling for local communities in east Sydney. Police made several raids on the Humphries' home and in a Doberman Quarterly magazine interview in 1997Dixon, Anita. "Interview with Rod Humphries". Doberman Quarterly, Dodd Publishing, Woodland, California, Volume 30, No 4, Winter 1997, pages 133–150 Humphries recalled police arresting his father: "I can still vividly recall all those Gambling Squad guys looking like Elliot Ness hitting our doors, windows, and coming over the back fence in a raid. My grandmother would shove betting slips down her bra and I would stuff them in my pants and run." Beginning in his mid-teens, Humphries worked part-time brush painting hand tools at a neighbourhood ironworks factory, and later worked assembling eyeglasses at another company. The sport of tennis boomed as a low-cost recreation in Australia after the War, and Humphries's mother, a league player, introduced him to the sport. Beginning at 12, Humphries made a few shillings attending to clay courts at several facilities and helping the professional coaches by working on basic instruction with very young beginners. The money also went toward his tennis lessons. Over time, tennis dramatically changed the course of his life and led to his permanent move to the United States in 1977.
Career in Australia
Humphries was first published at 13 years of age in 1956 in the Randwick Boys' High School yearbook after a poem he wrote about the Olympic Games in Melbourne that year won a school-wide competition. Four years later he landed a job as a copyboy at a small national wire service, Australian United Press (AUP). He quickly became a fully-fledged journalist at AUP, covering national and local politics, law courts, police rounds, the stock exchange, the trade union movement, features and sports for newspapers and radio stations. After four years as a general reporter, Humphries specialised in sports, and from 1964 through 1977 he was a full-time sports journalist/columnist, covering events at home and overseas, including in America, Asia and Europe, for Australia's oldest newspaper, The Sydney Morning Herald and its sister Sunday paper, The Sun-Herald. He wrote columns entitled "Inside Sport," "Days of Glory," "Rod Humphries Looks at League", and a whimsical column in the tabloid Sunday paper, "Rod Humphries Writes…"
At age 25, Humphries teamed with Lionel Rose, an Australian Aborigine then 19 years of age, to write Rose's life story in the book Lionel Rose: Australian, which told how Rose, who came from tough beginnings in the Australian outback, won the world bantamweight boxing title from the seemingly unbeatable hometown champion, Masahiko "Fighting" Harada, in Tokyo, Japan, on 27 February 1968. Humphries was also head writer and assistant producer of the Australian national television show This Is Your Life,Mitchell, David, ed. This Is Your Life – True Stories of Great Australians. Prentice Hall, Sydney, 1998. Rod Humphries Referenced on Pages: 213, 214, 243 and 261 (a franchise of Ralph Edwards' iconic American show ), for the first 100 shows from its beginning in 1975 through 1977, when he moved to the United States. He was offered a writing job on the show after he helped the producers to prepare for the first show to air, the life of Lionel Rose, on 14 September 1975. Humphries was introduced on the show.
In March 1976, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation chose Humphries to represent Australia's print sports journalists in a national television documentary on its popular Sportsnight series, titled Action Replay, which chronicled the planning, interviewing, writing and editorial production of a story in his day as a sports journalist. Humphries was also involved in the planning of another Sportsnight documentary, King of the Channel, which won the Best Sporting Documentary at the 1977 Australian Logie Awards.1977 Logie Awards: https://alldownunder.com/australian-logie/1977-tv-logie-awards.htm Hall of Fame long-distance swimmer, Des Renford, asked Humphries to script, in advance, probable interaction and conversations between Renford and his attendant boat crew for the filming of his 10th English Channel crossing. In his autobiography, Nothing Great Is Easy Renford praised Humphries as "an outstanding sportswriter and a bloke who helped me a lot…"Renford, Des. Nothing Great is Easy: The Des Renford Story. Ironbark Press, Sydney, 1992.