Kenneth Shave

Lionel Kenneth Osborn Shave, OBE (Mil) (1916–2009), was an Australian soldier, businessman, benefactor and patron of the arts.

He served with distinction during the Second World War in Tobruk and Palestine, attaining the rank of lieutenant colonel.

Rather than the usual procedure of amputation, Shave's surgeon, Frank Kingsley Norris, employing revolutionary surgical techniques, removed sections of the bones of the lower arm leaving Shave's right arm shorter and weaker, but with the hand functional.

[1] As well as being involved in theatre management and stage production, he played a number of roles, including the dashing Robert Browning in The Barretts of Wimpole Street.

At the outbreak of war, Shave presented himself to the medical tribunal headed by Major General Sir Frank Kingsley Norris who had saved his arm as a child, and who proudly pronounced him fit for military service.

He took part in the North African campaign of 1941, fighting "with skill and distinction" in the action which took Bardia from the Italians.

After a brief week's honeymoon Shave went to Toowoomba to assist in preparations for the New Guinea campaign in which he was attached to General Vernon Sturdee's intelligence corps.

In 1948 he was offered a job with the United Nations in Kashmir but was unable to travel overseas at the time because of his wife's ill health.

Shave then moved to Sydney, where he and Phyl lived at Darling Point with their two daughters, Margaret and Jillian.

He worked for a time with George Pattersons advertising agency, then the construction and mining company McDonald Industries, and finally as a director of Robe River, retiring at 68.

He was also a committeeman with the Lords Taverners and the honorary Librarian, historian and archivist of the Union Club, a role he held until the age of 91.