Vale Raymond Sheffield (1921-2004)
[ UniNews Vol. 13, No. 17
20 September - 4 October 2004 ]
Ray Sheffield (right) joined the Registrars Students Records Office at the University of Melbourne on 11 October 1943, and led it from November 1976 until retirement in December 1984.
There were few students or staff in the University with whom he did not have some contact. If students impatiently awaiting their results knew nothing of the days, evenings and weekends he spent in careful recording and checking before these results could appear, they were likely to meet him when enrolling, or at the graduation ceremony.
Academic staff dealt with him over examination marks, time-tables and class-room allocations; administrative colleagues noted his integrity, fairness, quiet efficiency and the calm courtesy extended to all, including the excitable and the demanding.
Born in March 1921, Ray spent his youth chiefly in Stawell, separated from siblings and fostered after his mothers death. He left school at 14, worked in a grain store, and when 18 joined the Citizens Military Forces and, in July 1940, the Australian Air Force. He served in the Middle East and New Guinea before injury returned him to civilian life in 1943, when the University employed him in time to help with the end-of-year rush to write up subject results prior to publication. Later, the years results were added to the individual student record cards which had been systematically compiled since shortly before World War One.
As increasingly frequent requests from biographers and historians for still earlier records involved his staff in lengthy searches through result books, he obtained funding for, and directed, the painstaking work necessary to complete this valuable sequence. When automation was introduced he helped to see the admirably maintained but inflexible manual system through to the first generation of computer software, experiencing the frustrations known to many during the early years of information technology.
On 7 September 1987 the University awarded Ray Sheffield its Silver Medal for exceptional service, at that time the Universitys highest award for a member of general staff. He had served it selflessly and never lost his affection for it. When his last illness left him dependent for communication on a machine, he talked amusingly and with evident enjoyment of former colleagues and old times. He died at Bethlehem Hospital on 17 August 2004, survived by his wife, Leslye, four children and four grandchildren.
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