80 years ago, a group of war widows met in Sydney and refused to be forgotten. This is the story of how the Guild began and the story of the woman who made it happen.
It was a winter afternoon in Sydney, Tuesday, 4 June 1946. In the conference room of the Grand United Order of Oddfellows on Castlereagh Street, more than 300 war widows had gathered. The war in the Pacific had ended less than a year before. The city was preparing for Victory Day celebrations the following week, when three-quarters of a million people would line the streets.
But the women in that room had been left out of the celebrations. They were war widows, and they had already learned that the end of the war did not mean the end of their hardship. Many faced real financial difficulty. They had lost their husbands’ incomes, and the pensions they received were meagre. As the minutes of that first meeting recorded, war widows had been “left out and forgotten, and the sacrifice they had made for the community overlooked.”
That day, they had come together to change that.
The woman who wrote 2,000 letters
The meeting was the work of Jessie Vasey CBE OBE. Born in Roma, Queensland, in 1897, she had graduated from the University of Melbourne with first-class honours and spent the war years supporting families through the AIF Women’s Association, which helped some nine thousand families in need.
Then the war reached her own family. In March 1945, her husband, Major General George Vasey, was killed when his aircraft crashed off Cairns. Jessie Vasey became a war widow herself. Even in her grief, she kept pushing for better treatment of women in her situation — she drafted a reply to a condolence note from the Prime Minister, John Curtin, on the back of his own letter.
She did not rest for long. She had seen what war widows faced, and she had an answer. By February 1946 she had written, by hand, over 2,000 letters encouraging war widows across the country to join a new organisation. She had already established the first Guild in Melbourne the previous November. New South Wales would be the second state to follow.
“… only a widow knows what a widow feels.” — Jessie Vasey
Self-help, not charity
From the very beginning, the Guild had two purposes that worked together. One was connection — friendship and belonging among women who understood one another without needing to explain. The other was advocacy — pressing governments for fair recognition and support.
Its first name, the War Widows’ Craft Guild, reflected a practical idea. Training in crafts such as weaving had a steadying, restorative value, and it offered a way to earn an income alongside an inadequate pension. The word “Craft” was later dropped, but “Guild,” with its sense of mutual aid, was kept on purpose.
What never changed was the principle underneath it all. When Jessie Vasey first applied to register the Guild, she was knocked back. A male politician asked her why widows should need to organise at all, offering instead, “But we’ll do it all for you.” Her reply has echoed through our history ever since:
“And what qualifies you to decide what women need?” — Jessie Vasey
This was never an organisation built on charity. It was built by women who intended to act for themselves.
80 years on
That first meeting in 1946 drew 100 members on the day. By mid-July, another 280 had joined. From there, the Guild grew into a national voice for war widows — and, over the decades, broadened to support all families of veterans, across every stage of service and beyond.
The need that brought those women together has not gone away. Families still carry the weight of service. They still navigate complex systems, and they still deserve connection, recognition, and support. We continue that work today for war widows, defence and veteran families alike — not moving beyond the women who founded us, but extending what they built.
Our anniversary line says it best: Together We Still Stand — 80 years of bringing out the best in each other. The words come straight from Jessie Vasey. In 1946 she described the Guild’s purpose as asking war widows “to get back to the best that was within them.” Eighty years on, that is still what we do.
