Jean, who survived her husband by 35 years, was a dedicated member of the Carlton coterie in the Bert Deacon Room on matchdays, and was also a regular at the Carlton Ladies Luncheons at the old ground. As those who knew her will attest, Jean was an extremely kind and gracious person, and a friend to all of the dark Navy Blue persuasion.
Australia was caught in the grip of world war when Jean, a girl from the northern Victorian town of Kerang, and her late beloved husband were first drawn together some 67 years ago.
The year was 1942, Lance Corporal Deacon had been posted to Alice Springs (and later Darwin), and it was whilst in “The Alice” that Bert met Jean, at that time working with the Allied Works Council.
“We got married on the day of the 1945 Preliminary Final against Collingwood,” Jean said in one of her last interviews, “and we had to put our wedding off for a couple of hours because of the footy”.
Jean vividly remembered the circumstances surrounding Bert’s historic Brownlow victory in September 1947. That night, she, Bert, and their eight-month old son Brian were listening to radio 3DB’s broadcast of the count from the comfort of their lounge room at the Deacon family home at 2 Hawker Avenue, Preston.
“Bert hadn’t thought about the Brownlow Medal and I didn’t even know what a Brownlow Medal was . . . I was a country bumpkin,” she explained.
“We had some friends, Jack Costello and his girlfriend Carol, who ran the Preston Hotel in High Street, who also came around to listen. When Bert’s name was announced the visitors went out to their car and returned with beer and sandwiches, and by the time reporters turned up there was a beer and sandwich waiting.
“The other thing I remember that night was that Bert’s brother-in-law (the former St Kilda footballer William Maslen), who lived in Coburg at the time, rode his bike across to shake hands with him.”
Jean kept her husband’s precious football heirloom in her purse for years after Bert’s premature death in January 1974, at a time when he was serving as Carlton’s general manager.
Regrettably, the medal, together with two other medals won by the great Carlton centre half-back, were in a handbag containing $350 stolen from the bench in Jean’s kitchen in 1991.
“The medal was a once in a lifetime thing. When someone took it the bottom fell out of everything,” she said.
But all was not lost, and when the then chief executive commissioner of the AFL, the late Alan Schwab, heard of Jean’s plight, he came to the rescue. It was Schwab, who forged a friendship with Deacon when he (Schwab) was a secretary at Richmond, who personally handed the replacement medal to Jean.
Until the end, Jean harboured hope that her husband’s original medal would one day be returned.
“It would be lovely to get the medal back, but I won’t be holding my breath,” Jean said on the 60th anniversary of Bert’s Brownlow victory. “I reckon that whoever grabbed my purse didn’t really know what he was taking. The medal probably didn’t mean anything to him.”
Jean added that the medal meant a lot to her late husband “and it would mean a hell of a lot if the original was recovered . . . then I’d have a medal for each of my two boys”.
Jean Deacon sports her husband's replacement medal
Jean is survived by her two sons Brian and Robert, two grandchildren and a great grandchild. Her funeral is to be held on Wednesday in Preston, not far from the old Cramer Street ground where one of Carlton’s true greats first chased the leather.
The Carlton players wore black armbands as a mark of respect to Jean Deacon, in last Saturday’s match with Adelaide at Etihad Stadium.
Jean Deacon by Dudley Drew's portrait of her late husband
