Personal
On 21 September 1921 he married Annie Mills McLeod; they had no children. In 1966, she was made a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE). After a long illness Dame Anne McEwen died on 10 February 1967.
At the time of becoming Prime Minister in December of that year, McEwen was a widower, being the first Australian Prime Minister unmarried during his term of office. (The next such case was Julia Gillard, Prime Minister from 24 June 2010, who has a domestic partner but is unmarried.)
On 26 July 1968, McEwen married Mary Eileen Byrne, his personal secretary; he was aged 68, she was 46. In retirement he distanced himself from politics, undertook some consulting work, and traveled to Japan and South Africa. Survived by his second wife, McEwen died, without heir, on 20 November 1980 at Toorak and was cremated. His estate was sworn for probate at $2,180,479. At the time of his death he was receiving a small pension from the Department of Social Security.
Read more about this topic: John McEwen
Famous quotes containing the word personal:
“It has no share in the leadership of thought: it does not even reflect its current. It does not create beauty: it apes fashion. It does not produce personal skill: our actors and actresses, with the exception of a few persons with natural gifts and graces, mostly miscultivated or half-cultivated, are simply the middle-class section of the residuum.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)
“Nothing strengthens the judgment and quickens the conscience like individual responsibility. Nothing adds such dignity to character as the recognition of one’s self-sovereignty; the right to an equal place, everywhere conceded—a place earned by personal merit, not an artificial attainment by inheritance, wealth, family and position.”
—Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815–1902)
“A man who has nothing which he cares about more than he does about his personal safety is a miserable creature who has no chance of being free, unless made and kept so by the existing of better men than himself.”
—John Stuart Mill (1806–1873)