fred hollows biography

 Fred Hollows (1929-1993)

Fred hollows was born in Dunedin New Zealand on the 9^th of April 1929, to Joseph and   Charice Hollows. In Dunedin Fred live in a family of six including himself. He lived with three brothers Celine, John and Maurice. It was a very happy average size family in those times. Fred Hollows mother and father Charcie and Joseph named Fed after his grandfather Fredrick Cossom Marshall, because he was like a little version of him. He is known to the world in the ways that he gave people some of their eye sight back.

In Fred‘s early life he still lived in Dunedin with his family and by the age of five he had started year one at North-East Valley Primary school. In school Fred’s favourite topic was science. In his primary school he stayed at the same school for six years.

When Fred finish primary school he started high school at Palmerston Boys High school. There he took science as one of his subject. He highly valued school and he loved to learn. In high school he attended school with his three brothers and got alone with them fairly well.

In 1958 Fred got married to a lady named Mary Skiller. Seven years later they moved to Australia. While in Australia he became the professor of Ophthalmology at the University of New South Wales. Around that same year he was given an advance Australia award. By the time he was thirty-six he was head of the eye department in Sydney.

A few years later Mary Skiller died and by this time he was already travelling Australia to help improve people’s eye sight. He was a man how loved to help people so he Established the Aboriginal medical centre in Redfern, Sydney. After opening the Aboriginal medical centre he meant another lady, Gabi O’Sullevan who he also married. After he married Gabi he was awarded Australian human rights medal for treating thousands of people suffering from trachoma.

As his job he still worked as an eye doctor but unfortunately he was diagnosed with kidney cancer. Even though that happened he left it behind and received much recognition and many awards like humanist of the year and a royal international award for world understanding. He was a very talented man and was awarded his first citizen ship which was Eritrea’s for honorary citizen which he was very proud of.

The way that Fred helped others is why he is known to Australians. He spent his money and time to help others in the poorer parts of Australia who could not see well or were suffering from trachoma. He loved helping people as best as he could and he treated more that 30,000 people that were not able to see well. He prescribed more than 10,000 glasses and he enjoyed every bit of it.  Most of his time in the outback made him wonder if he should get buried there but he didn’t know for sure he wanted to.

In his spare time he had loved to ski and mountain climb with his friends because every now and then he loved the thrill. As a child he loved going to church with his family. He wanted to be a minister but he changed his mind when he found his love of science.

At the age of sixty-four he died of kidney cancer at home with his family. A year or so after his death his family, friends and supporters decided to set up the Fred Hollows foundation which raised over six million dollars to help fund people in need of eye sight.

WRITEN BY BILLIE