The Australian Women's Register

Summary

Mary Cramer, a teacher before her marriage to John (later Sir John) Cramer, in January 1922, brought her formidable organising skills to rearing their four children and to her public activities. On the election of her husband as mayor of North Sydney in 1939, she assumed the duties of lady mayoress. Known for her natural sense of humour, she organised a Voluntary Aid Detachment for North Sydney at the beginning of World War II, and also the first group of the Women’s Australian National Service in Sydney and became its first commandant. Her husband later became a founding member of the Liberal Party of Australia and a Minister for the Army from 1956-1963. She was president of the New South Wales division of the Red Cross Society and of the Mater Misericordae Hospital Advisory Board at North Sydney. Despite recurring illness, she maintained her public activities and was appointed as Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire on 12 June 1971 for distinguished public service, which had covered four decades. According to the report in The Sydney Morning Herald on 26 May 1994 on the death of Sir John Cramer, ‘Sir John with his late wife Dame Mary, had left an indelible mark on the lower North Shore’.