Norman Lacy - Victorian Basketballer (1956-1960)

Victorian Basketballer (1956-1960)

Norman Lacy's mother died of lung cancer on 21 February 1956 at the age of 44 when he was 14 years of age. Lacy regarded this event as the most formative of his life.

He dealt with his grief by throwing himself into sport. The opportunity to play for his local church basketball team in the Church of England Basketball Association competition presented itself and he devoted all his spare time to the sport. During his teenage years, Lacy three times represented Victoria at the Australian Junior Basketball Championships, as under 16 team Captain in Adelaide in 1956, as under 18 team Vice-Captain in Sydney in 1957, and again in Davenport in 1958, in which year he also won the Best and Fairest Player award.

Lacy's initial occupation from 1957 to 1961 was as an apprenticed plumber and gasfitter in his father's plumbing business that traded under the name A.H.Lacy Bros. in Richmond.

Strongly influenced by the Billy Graham crusade in Melbourne in 1959, Lacy became a committed evangelical Christian. During his early 20s he was a member of the Scripture Union and Children's Special Service Mission movements and as a clergyman, the Anglican Evangelical Fellowship of Australia. He subsequently, became an active advocate of the application of Christian teaching to social issues. This is reflected in his first (maiden) speech in the Victorian Parliament where he argued for the responsibilities parliamentarians had for ensuring that the poor had appropriate opportunities of breaking out of the culture of poverty.

His father died at the age of 52 on 30 May 1960 when Lacy was 18 years of age. His father had experienced poor health for many years with heart and kidney conditions and had never fully recovered from his wife's death four years earlier, struggling with the impact this had on his young family. For Lacy this represented a seminal moment in his life. He came to acutely feel that he was alone in the world and that whatever the future held, it would be determined by his efforts alone.