Dr Robert Bown reckons he was a boy of eight or nine when he plucked up the courage to pen a letter to his favourite Carlton footballer Jack Howell.
An impassioned Carlton supporter who thought the world of the 1947 Premiership ruckman, Dr Bown wrote to Howell via the football club respectfully requesting an image of his boyhood hero.
To his eternal credit, Dr Bown, an anaesthetist now living in New Town in Tasmania, recently saw fit to post his precious keepsake back to the football club with a simple attachment: “Thought you might like this for the archives”.
Thanks to Dr Bown, the photograph of the great “Chooka” now finds a place amongst the many and varied items of memorabilia that are uniquely Carlton.
“I’m really pleased that the club finds this photograph of interest,” Dr Bown said. “I got this photograph when I was a kid and kept it as a memento, but it’s not relevant to my children now so I thought you people might enjoy having it.”
The back of the photograph. (Photo: Supplied)
Recruited to Carlton from bayside Chelsea, Jack Howell represented Carlton in 137 senior matches and booted 246 goals through the dark years of the Second World War and beyond.
A dual club best and fairest winner either side of the Premiership season of 1947 and an All-Australian player in 1953, Howell was rated by coach Perc Bentley as “the best tap ruckman the game has seen”.
As Howell’s father Jack Senior was a Premiership player with South Melbourne in 1918 and his son Scott with Carlton in 1981, "Chooka" is the middle man of the only family to have produced VFL Premiership footballers in three successive generations.
Dr Bown’s unmarked photograph of Howell, in his playing strip preparing to execute the long-gone placekick at Princes Park, is thought to have been taken by the noted local photographer Charles Boyles.
What gives the photograph its unique value is the inscription on the reverse: “To Robert With best Wishes Jack Howell Chooka”.
Dr Bown’s connection with the club can be sourced to the Depression times when his grandfather operated a millinery factory in the local area. “The factory made women’s hats through the depression times, and both my father and grandfather worked there,” he said. “They both barracked for Carlton so I took up barracking for them.”
Now 74, Dr Bown believes that he wrote to Howell around 1948 or ’49. At the time he was domiciled in Melbourne until the age of 14 before relocating to Albury with his schooling.
Of Howell, Dr Bown simply said: “I thought he was Christmas. He was a good guy and a good player”.
