Illawarra Mercury Weekender Feature

Man on a mission

Leigh Stewart’s vision, drive, ambition and community spirit helped him raise $2.5 million for children, but it took a toll on his personal life, writes LOUISE TURK.

Two weeks before the 2008 Bandage Bear Benefit Night, the face of the charity juggernaut – Leigh Stewart – wondered whether he should call it off.

Stewart was exhausted. He was working punishing hours in real estate and things were falling apart in his personal life. A close friend warned him he was taking on too much.

Yet Stewart decided it was worth soldiering on. He says although times were tough, “I never took my eye off the ball”.

He knew the event could safely raise big money through the generosity of the 450 people attending at Wests Illawarra club at Unanderra.

“I thought to myself: ‘Even if it’s just on, we will raise $100,000, which is 20 or 30 wheelchairs in the next 12 months,” he recalls. “It’s not my right to call it off. It’s gone beyond me yet I’ve still got to make it happen.”

Stewart got on stage that night and did what he is best known for in the Illawarra. With microphone in hand, he rallied the troops with raffles and auctions and got them to dig deep in their pockets.

It was an important moment in Stewart’s life – the dinner raised $190,000 for cancer research at The Children’s Hospital at Westmead and for Kids Fund (co-founded by Stewart), an Illawarra-based charity managed by The Disability Trust which provides essential aids and equipment for families of children with severe disabilities.

It also defined a pattern in Stewart’s life: that giving so much of himself publicly and professionally often came at a personal cost.

While Stewart was focused on keeping the Wollongong Hawks basketball team afloat and scooping up the accolades at work – Illawarra sales person of the year in 1998 and 1999; chairperson of the Illawarra Real Estate Institute 2001-2009; and winning the Real Estate Institute of NSW’s John Greig Community Service Award for Excellence in 2005 – other areas were suffering.

Stewart’s first marriage collapsed, he didn’t spend enough time with his kids, and by his own admission he was a heart attack waiting to happen.

“I think one of my big regrets in the early stages of my first marriage was that I did work ridiculously hard in all elements, whether it was in real estate, charity, community work, basketball or for the community bank (he was deputy chairman of the Fairy Meadow Community Bank),” he says.

“I look back at it and I’m not proud of how hard I worked and probably the sacrifices my children had to make with not knowing dad or not seeing him.

“I remember getting home from work on a Saturday at 6pm and I’d be on my telephone in the driveway until 11pm. The kids would be there at the window looking at me and waiting for me to come in. I was on the telephone negotiating houses and the like.”

Stewart took a hard look at himself, realising changes needed to be made. He improved his health by losing weight and he prioritised time with those he loved.

It was a simple yet effective strategy. Stewart is now the University of Wollongong’s (UOW) Development Manager for Community Health and Medical Research and he is a proud and engaged father. He turns up to school events for his kids – Annalise, 11, Daniel, 9, and Matthew, 6, – and he watches their sports on the weekend.

He has also found a kindred spirit in Lisa Humphries, an event manager and fundraiser who works for The Shepherd Centre for deaf and hearing impaired children. The happy couple are soon to wed.

Although Stewart may have mellowed in his personal life, he has lost none of the characteristic drive and ambition which saw him, at the age of 41, awarded the Order of Australia (OAM) for service to the community through fundraising projects.

His latest quest is to recruit a professor of paediatrics to head up Southern Children’s Care, a collaboration between the UOW’s Graduate School of Medicine and Faculty of Health and Behavioural Sciences research teams and other community partners.

“When I was presented with the OAM, I remember sitting there and thinking: ‘I’m only halfway through the journey’,” Stewart says. “And now, considering the last two years with Southern Children’s Care and the exciting things that are happening with that, I am only halfway through.”

Stewart took daughter Annalise, then aged 10, to the ceremony at Government House, partly to help her understand the importance of the values of compassion, kindness and community service.

“I think the OAM is not so much for myself but for my children,” he says. “It was very special to have Annalise there with me.”

Stewart says he was hand-picked for his role at the UOW’s Office of Community and Partnerships by mentor Gerard Sutton, former vice-chancellor of the institution. Stewart, with his can-do approach and strong networking and communication skills, is a good fit for the role of facilitating connections between the university and the community.

“I’ve always had a passion for bringing people together, having a vision, and making it happen,” he says.

Yet what drives Stewart to give so much of himself to charity events and the community is not attributable to any particular hardship or event. He says it’s just the way he is.

The seed of Stewart’s community-minded nature was planted by his father, the late Dave Stewart.

“He passed away when I was 24,” says Stewart who is the eldest of six children.

“He was very involved in the community and when we were kids he was always driving us down to Stewart St which is named after his grandfather and saying to us: ‘This is our town and we should do our best for it’.

“As a kid we’d be walking down the street and everyone would be saying ‘hello’ to dad. He was always very proud to say that he came from Wollongong. He used to own four toy shops when I was growing up so as a kid I was always in those shops learning how to be with people and learning how to do business.

“I was always dad’s right-hand man, as he used to say.”

Stewart also learned from a young age how to interact with older generations. Dave Stewart was already 47 by the time his first-born arrived.

This upbringing would stand Stewart in good stead when he was elected to the board of directors at the Illawarra Leagues Club, aged only 19.

“I was sitting around the table with all these mentors such as Ron Franks, Ted Tobin and Terry Tobin and they were somehow listening to me,” Stewart says.

There were also unpleasant bullying episodes in his formative years which Stewart learned to overcome and turn into a positive.

“I was the fat kid on the block when I was in Year 7, Year 8 and Year 9 and I copped a lot of bullying, a lot of tough times,” he says.

“Mentally, when I was 14 or 15, I decided to change my head space. I took it on to walk away from the tormenting and all those sort of things and worked on my sport, my debating and my public speaking.

“They were vital times and they gave me the drive to try and do the best I could.”

This approach of blocking out the negativity and finding a different way forward would serve Stewart well later in life.

Stewart says he was met with looks of disbelief at Wollongong’s first Bandage Bear gala dinner in 1999 when he set the ticket price at $100.

“At the time that was a lot of money,” he recalls.

“No-one had done that before. I said we can raise $100,000 on a Saturday night and people laughed at me. I was told that no-one can raise $100,000 on a Saturday night.

“I then made the tickets $150 a head and later $200 a head. And then at the Fraternity Club in 2005 we raised $320,000 on a Saturday night for Bandage Bear.”

One week after the 2004 Boxing Day Tsunami, which hit off the west coast of Sumatra, Stewart took charge of organising an Illawarra relief effort for communities affected by the deadly natural disaster.

“I said: ‘We can make a big difference quickly in this town’,” he says.

“We put on a dinner at The Beachouse (restaurant, Wollongong) for $1000 a plate, we had 140 people turn up and we raised $200,000 on a Tuesday night.

“Again people said to me: ‘How can you charge $1000 to go to a dinner?’, yet the community rallied.

“I’ve now applied that same attitude to our drive to appoint the new paediatrics professor. Why can’t we have an international doctor and why can’t we have the best health system that we could possibly have?

“Why does Newcastle and the Hunter have medical facilities that are better than ours? We are the ninth largest city in Australia and we should have a health system for our children in which we don’t have to take helicopters to Sydney.”

With such a high profile, Stewart also has attracted some criticism from those he says have a tall poppy syndrome mentality.

Stewart says he doesn’t mind what his detractors say to his face. However, what has caused him anguish in the past, has been scuttlebutt behind his back making its way to family members.

“It hurts me when it affects people close to me,” he says. “The DUI was a tough moment for me.”

Stewart was convicted in court of high-range drink-driving in 2010. Stewart underwent a breath test in the early hours of January 27 after police spotted him standing next to his vehicle which had become bogged when he had tried to make a U-turn on Mt Keira Rd.

“It was tough for my family and for my children to see me strung and quartered for making a mistake which I fully acknowledged,” he says.

“My little girl doesn’t need to hear that … but in saying that it’s still a lesson that I’ve learnt. It was probably the worst day but also the best day of my life. It was a day in which I took stock of what is important and realised that we are all human and that we can all make mistakes.

“I was just very, very fortunate that the mistake I made didn’t affect anyone other than my pride and it probably didn’t do any harm having it taken a bit of a notch down.

“The things that do hurt me as far as the community side of things go is that when people who don’t know me make assumptions and make judgments and they then get filtered through to people that are close to me, in particular my children.”

Stewart says this is one of the reasons he has kept out of political life.

“I remember a story one time. I heard it on the grapevine that someone had said that I had taken half the money out of Bandage Bear. The Disability Trust handles all the money. I’ve never touched a cent. I’ve never seen a cent.”

Stewart says he is able to remain strong and committed to his causes because he believes what he is doing is making a difference for the better.

“I think the bigger picture is that I know what I’m doing is heading in the right direction and that the work is valued and important to others,” he says.

“I also think that’s where our town needs to work on itself. We need to embrace people who are successful. We need to embrace people with a vision. We need to congratulate them and not wonder why they do it. We need to say: ‘Good on you, and how can we be a part of it?’.

“Not wonder that there must be some sort of an angle or there must be some reason why someone is doing it. And once we get over that as a community we will be far stronger as a community.”

In past months, Stewart and helpers have been working hard to gear up for the Bandage Bear Celebrity Benefit Weekend, with two big events at Wests Illawarra today and tomorrow. The traditional Bandage Bear Benefit Night, a gala dinner for about 470 guests, will be held this evening. Tomorrow’s event will cater for up to 500 guests in a less formal atmosphere but with the same focus on learning more about the region’s inspiring children, who are battling serious illness or disabilities, and their families.

Stewart says the event has been extended to two days by popular demand. The annual event has raised more than $2.5 million since its inception.

“I do feel like I’ve covered a couple of lifetimes in a short period of time.”