Fred Dehman was a Foundation Member and Foundation Secretary of Tamarama SLSC at a time when the Club was referred to as Tamarama Surf Bathing and Life Saving Club. Fred passed away in June 1954. Ernie Weir (aka Pop Weir) wrote a glowing obituary for Fred, reproduced below. I note that Ernie refers to Fred's involvement from 1906 with Surf Life Saving, as it was at that time. It's also interesting to reflect on Ernie's words that provide a sense how Surf Life Saving evolved from what it was in the early days, to what it had become by 1954.
Guy
OBITUARY
The Late FRED DENHAM
Foundation Secretary and Life Member of the Tamarama Surf Life Saving Club, 1906 to June, 1954
So our good friend Fred Denham has left us. By practically all you members of the Tamarama Surf Club he will be remembered as a tired, rather sick, old man, who still managed to come down here and get his daily swim, even if it were only just getting wet.
None of you is likely to remember that for two generations he was intimately connected with the surfing movement from its very foundation. How can youth be expected to remember old age? But so it was.
Fred Denham was in at the birth not only of the Tamarama Surf Club but of the Surf Life Saving movement itself the thing that has grown into the most amazing altruistic sport that the world has ever known.
As a swimmer no one would have given much for him. Who among us in those far off days was any good? No one knew anything of surfing. We just found out as we grew. Still, there never was an occasion when Fred Denham wasn't game to chase any one in trouble, with or without the belt.
So far as this Club is concerned he really was one of its founders. As its Foundation Secretary he was here, there, everywhere trying to find ways to finance the venture, and if I remember rightly, he held that position till he left for the War in 1914.
Whether any of the old Pioneers of those days are still on deck I do not know, but a triumvirate you would do well to honour and remember are George Philip (Foundation President and father of our present President) whose generosity and financial assistance enabled the Club to erect its first building; Bill Stewart (grandfather of our friend Ken) who would organise anything the Club was game to try, and Fred Denham, who gathered in the fees where and how he could and saw to it that none was wasted.
Vale Fred Denham, a man of fierce independence - a steadfast, faithful friend.
E. E. WEIR, PATRON