Twenty-one years at the helm: Aileen Watkins OBE and the making of the Guild
Part of our 80th anniversary series, honouring the war widows who built this organisation.
When the War Widows’ Guild began in NSW in 1946, it had almost nothing. No offices of its own, no housing, no reliable income. What it had was a founding idea from Jessie Vasey CBE OBE —that war widows did not need charity, they needed rights, independence, and one another — and a small number of women prepared to do the work.
Aileen Watkins OBE was one of those women. She would go on to lead the Guild in NSW for twenty-one years, the longest presidency in our history. Her story is one of stewardship: of taking something fragile and new, and transforming it to something lasting.
As we mark 80 years, hers is a story worth telling in full.
A widow, and a weaver
Aileen Watkins was a war widow. She understood, from her own life, what the women around her were carrying, and she never mistook the work for anything other than what it was.
She was also a weaver, and it was through craft that she first shaped the Guild. In the earliest years, handicraft was not a hobby. It was the practical heart of the Guild’s philosophy: a way for widows to earn, to gain confidence, and to sit alongside other women who understood. Aileen was engaged as a permanent weaving instructor and became closely associated with the development of the Guild’s weaving school at the Drill Hall.
She did the unglamorous work that made things possible. She used her craft networks to secure looms. She travelled to Melbourne to take lessons from expert teachers, and in 1948 completed an advanced weaving course at the Victorian Guild so she could bring that skill home. She built a library of instruction and pattern books for students, so that knowledge would stay with the Guild and not walk out the door with any one teacher.
It was a quality that defined her whole contribution: she thought about what would last.
Becoming President
Aileen wanted to be President. In the record of these careful, self-effacing women, that ambition stands out, and there is nothing to apologise for in it. She stood for the role in 1949 and served briefly before Jean Cunningham was elected. In 1952 she was elected again, and this time she stayed.
She led the NSW Guild from 1952 to 1973 — twenty-one unbroken years. During that time she also served as National Vice-President and, on occasion, as Acting National President.
Those two decades were the years in which the Guild grew from an idea into an institution. Membership expanded. The network of Guild Clubs spread across the state, giving country and city widows alike a place to belong. And the Guild built real, permanent homes for women who had been left adrift after the war.
Aileen led through the change without losing sight of why any of it mattered.
The partnership that built the houses
No account of these years is complete without Una Boyce OBE AM. From 1961 to 1973, Watkins and Boyce worked side by side, and the Guild’s records describe them as a forceful partnership. Together, the President and her trusted colleague gave the Guild the steadiness and drive it needed to take on its most ambitious work.
Housing was the clearest measure of that work. When Aileen Watkins was honoured by the Queen in 1966, appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire, her citation read “particularly for services in the field of housing.” For an organisation that had started with nine bedsitting rooms, that recognition was, in itself, a marker of how far the Guild had come.
She received a Coronation Medal in 1953, and in 1966 it was Sir Roden Cutler, then Governor of NSW and a Guild Patron, who spoke of the pleasure it gave him to invest her with the OBE.
Aileen understood exactly what the honour meant, and who it belonged to. Acknowledging it, she said the leaders of many ex-service organisations had stressed that it “will add prestige to our Guild and I am sure we will go on to bigger and better things.” Then she added the line that says the most about her:
“I love the Guild and feel it is something well worthwhile working for.”
The way she led
Those who worked with Aileen Watkins remembered a leader of real presence. She presided over the Guild’s meetings without notes, and she was known for a remarkable memory. One member, Merle Dwyer, recalled that at annual meetings she would memorise every person’s title, every military and naval detail, and “never, ever made a mistake.”
She carried herself with a distinctive elegance — she was rarely seen without one of her magnificent hats — but those closest to her spoke of something deeper than style. Her friend Maureen Giddings described her as “absolutely charming, a very warm person, very intelligent, very sensible, very caring,” and said she “cared very deeply for the work of the War Widows’ Guild.” To Giddings, Aileen was “the glowing example” of what the Guild stood for.
A place of honour
Aileen Watkins stepped down as President in November 1973, on her doctors’ advice, after nearly three decades of service to the Guild. She died on 28 July 1982.
Una Boyce, who had worked alongside her for so long, wrote in the Guild Digest that Aileen would keep a place of honour in the history of women’s achievements in this country. Her “dignity, her charm, her integrity, her sense of humour, her sense of occasion,” Boyce wrote, “all these qualities and more helped to establish the Guild as the organisation we are so proud of today.”
Why her story matters today
The Guild that Aileen Watkins led is not a distant thing. It is the same Guild, carried forward.
The principle she gave 21 years to is the principle we still hold. In 80 years it has not narrowed but widened. Today the Families of Veterans Guild extends that same support, voice, and connection to war widows, defence and veteran families across Australia, because the need for connection, advocacy, and support continues across generations.
We are not moving beyond the women who founded us. We are extending what they built. When we honour someone like Aileen Watkins, we are not only looking back at a long and generous life. We are recognising the foundation we still stand on.
She thought about what would last. 80 years on, we are the proof that it did.
Together We Still Stand — 80 years of bringing out the best in each other.
Aileen Watkins’ story is drawn from No Peacetime Cinderellas: A History of the War Widows’ Guild of Australia in New South Wales 1946–2006 by Roslyn Burge, the Guild’s commissioned history.
Throughout our anniversary year we are sharing the stories of the war widows who built this organisation. If you have a story to share, we would love to hear from you.
