About my dad

The 16^th October 1942 saw the arrival of Denis Albert Jenkins he was the second child or Richard Thomas Jenkins & Enid Jenkins he was born in Kurri Kurri.

When he was 4yrs old his father had a job working on the Snowy Mountain Hydro Scheme and the young Deny went with his dad to the area and while there he managed to get himself lost but of course he was found.

At the age of 8 he was spending the school holidays with his Uncle Arthur & Aunty Joyce, it was at that time that his mother left his father for another man. Young Denis was basically abandoned by his mother, from that time on he was raised mostly by his Aunt & Uncle.

Although he remained close to his father till his death in 1991 at the age of 75. He did have a relationship with his mum but he wasn't as close to her.

At the age of 15 he went to work on the railway, starting out in the meal room as a barrel boy, from there he went on to become a station hand then a signalman working in signal boxes. He then became a train guard and in total spent 43 years working on the railway.

He retired in 2001 and found a love of computers and genealogy tracing his and mum's family trees. He was the go to person in the family for computer problems.

In 1958 while working on the railway he meet Mavis, his soulmate they married in 1960.

They had 5 children, 4 daughters and 1 son and he was super proud of all his children he was happy being the father of his 4 daughters and didn't feel the need to have a son which is why God blessed him with his son.

In 2009 he was diagnosed with lung cancer he had surgery followed by chemo and radiation. The type of lung cancer he had had a high mortality rate with only 10% of people surviving for 5 years after having cancer so the fact that dad lived for 10 years post cancer is amazing. In fact when he was diagnosed he was told if it hadn't been found when it did he would been dead by Christmas. He only went to the hospital for a pain in the gut and they never figured out what was causing the pain in the gut.

What kept him going in 2009 was the arrival of 2 granddaughters and 1 great-granddaughter in 2010, he was super excited to have more grandchildren.

In total he had 17 grandchildren and 15 great-grandchildren and he would have been so happy that so many young children turned up at his funeral and wake.

When I was a child I read books a lot and never saw my dad read a book but when he was going through cancer he started to read and he found a love of books, not fiction but books based on real events, he liked books about history and trains.

His daughters helped him with jobs around the house like wallpapering the kitchen, running power to the garage and putting up the pool.

All his children considered dad to be their hero and we felt blessed to have him as our dad.