Great Scot September 2019 Great Scot 157_September 2019_ONLINE | Page 65

A link with the builder of the
Littlejohn Memorial Chapel
Billy Cockram MBE (’42), who died on 16 June, was the son of Lou
Cockram, whose firm, T R and L Cockram built Scotch’s Littlejohn Memorial
Chapel in the 1930s. The Chapel’s foundation stone was laid on 12 October
1935, and it was opened on 18 October 1936. The Chapel was one of a
number of beloved Scotch buildings constructed by T R and L Cockram.
As a 10-year-old boy in 1935, Billy Cockram would visit his father’s
worksite. Twenty-one years later he was married in the Chapel. Fittingly,
Billy’s funeral was held in the Chapel on 26 June.
The tribute below was written by Billy’s daughter, FELICITY COCKRAM.
COCKRAM, Donald (Bill or Billy) MBE (’42)
Donald, known as Bill or Billy Cockram,
was born in Melbourne on 5 August 1925.
He was the only son of Louis Laurent and
Dorothy Cockram.
Billy, who attended Scotch from 1932
to 1942, was a Scotch boy for all his school
years and loved both his time at the School
and as a devoted Old Scotch Collegian.
Billy attended Melbourne University,
leaving after only one year of engineering
studies, to join the RAAF and see service in
Borneo. He became an air gunner, squeezing
his six feet two inch frame into the turret of
a Mitchell bomber. Proud of his own and his
father’s Anzac tradition, Billy stayed friends,
and always marched with, his mates from the
Number 2 Squadron.
Post war, Billy took up a position in the
family firm T R & L Cockram. The firm was
one of the founding builders of Marvellous
Melbourne; Billy’s great-great-grandfather,
Thomas, arrived from England by sailing ship
in 1853. Billy was the last of five generations
of Cockrams whose lives as builders have
been woven into 166 years of the city
that Billy loved so much. Cockrams built
landmark buildings such as the Windsor
Hotel and the Princess and Rivoli Theatres,
and down the generations, hospitals,
universities, factories, schools and more.
On the Scotch campus, Cockrams built
the Hospital, Monash Lodge and Gates,
Arthur Robinson House, the boatshed,
Mackie Hall, the Observatory, the Ned
Shergold Building and, importantly, the
Littlejohn Memorial Chapel.
Billy’s father, Lou Cockram, built the
Chapel, the work won by tender in 1935.
Cockrams had a proud tradition of artisan
brickwork. The foreman reported that
300,000 ordinary bricks and 120,000
special bricks were used, with 46 different
handmade shapes in the arch alone. A
diesel engine hoisted 3000 bricks over eight
kilometres of track per day. Billy was 10 years
old and full of hijinks, bringing his playmates
on site to wreak havoc with the workmen and
use the phone in the shed.
When Billy married Caroline Campbell
in the Chapel in 1956, he was supervising
the construction of the new Sub-Primary.
When the newlyweds emerged, they were
surprised to find the workmen formed in a
guard of honour. In the accompanying photo,
the foreman, Jack Bilton, is holding up the
roll of plans, grinning at his own impromptu
inspiration; two carpenters raise their saws,
two bricklayers their levels and two labourers
hold their shovels aloft. The men were
worried their prank would not go over well,
but Billy and Caroline enjoyed the joke.
Billy became a highly respected leader
in the building and construction industry,
and in the 1970s and '80s was President of
the Master Builders of Victoria at the time of
its centenary, and Federal President of the
Australasian Institute of Building.
Billy was dedicated to seeing the
standards of technical and professional
education in the building industry developed,
and for apprentices to be properly trained
and recognised for their trade. He sat for
lengthy terms on the first ever TAFE Board
and the Holmesglen Institute and RMIT
Councils. He was on the Apprenticeship
Commission, the State Council of Technical
Education, the Victorian Industrial Training
Commission, the Historic Buildings Council
and the Victorian Congress of Employers’
Federation. Billy went on to become a
highly sought after Fellow of the Institute of
Arbitrators.
Billy approached both life and work
in a very collegiate way, and for that was
rewarded with great respect and good
friends. He was the best of family men to
Caroline and his three daughters, Lulu,
Felicity and Alex. He kept a house full of
guests at Point Lonsdale and looked forward
to his frequent boys’ trips in a light plane with
him as navigator. Scouts was a huge part of
his life from Rover to Area Commissioner and
he was later Chairman of the State Executive.
As a man of great integrity, honour and
good conscience, Billy was an elder of
the Presbyterian Church and a Rotarian.
His tremendous ethics and generosity
distinguished him, as did his one and only 40
acre paddock voice.
Billy Cockram received many awards and
honours, the foremost of which was an MBE
for his service to both the community and the
building and construction industry.
Billy died on 16 June 2019. Appropriately,
his funeral service was held in the Littlejohn
Memorial Chapel on 26 June.
ABOVE: AT THE LITTLEJOHN MEMORIAL CHAPEL
WEDDING OF BILL (‘42) AND CAROLINE COCKRAM
IN 1956, COMPANY WORKMEN FORMED A GUARD
OF HONOUR. BILL’S FATHER AND UNCLE HAD BUILT
THE CHAPEL, AND BILL WAS BUILDING WHAT IS NOW
KNOWN AS THE NED SHERGOLD BUILDING.
www.scotch.vic.edu.au Great Scot
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