“Gramp” – the Robert Heatley story
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Who was Robert Heatley? It’s a question few of the countless thousands of Carlton supporters to have filed into the Robert Heatley Stand these past seven decades could ever hope to answer.
Thank God for David Adams. Now 78 and living quietly in retirement, Adams is Robert Heatley’s grandson. And today, more than sixty years since Heatley’s passing, Adams clings to the precious personal memories of one of the true pioneers of Princes Park, whom he affectionately knew as “Gramp”.
“To me, my grandfather was a real role model, in the sense that he had tremendous character,” Adams said this week.
“You would think that as a child you wouldn’t pick up on that, but I quickly began to see that Gramp was a man who was very good to people and his friends told me many wonderful stories. One of his good friends used to say that ‘during the Depression he was marvellous to me. I couldn’t pay off the mortgage on the house, but he came over and paid the lot out’.
“He [Heatley] was a man who knew everybody, but people had to come to him. He didn’t go out back slapping and he didn’t seek favours. He wasn’t a man with intimate friends. He was a taciturn man, he didn’t have a lot to say, but what he said was very much to the point.
“Gramp was extremely astute, but he hated hype and I’ll give you a good example of that. He once had a garage built, a beaut double garage at his old house, and he went to buy a car. Anyway, the salesman expounded at such great length about the wonders of this car. My grandfather just stood there in silence and, after some time, said to the salesman: ‘You are so much in love with this car that I couldn’t bear to take it off you!’.”
A far-reaching family tree in Adams’ precious keep reveals that Robert Murray Heatley was born in Carlton on December 28, 1863, the year before the Carlton Football Club itself was founded.
