Roger Levinge Dean CBE was born in Sydney on 10 December 1913 and died on 7 January 1998 in Sydney. His early life was spent in Newcastle where he attended Newcastle Church of England Grammar School and Newcastle Boys High School. In 1935, at the age of 22, he joined the Newcastle-based company Ryland Brothers as a clerk. War was to interrupt this employment, and he served between 1942 and 1945, being commissioned in the AIF in 1942. He arrived in Darwin within weeks of its being bombed in February 1942. He was a lieutenant in the 103 Anti-Tank Regiment with his unit travelling extensively throughout the Top End, investigating supposed enemy landings along the remote coastline. This was his first contact with Aboriginal communities and it led to his great interest in Aboriginal advancement. Later in the war, he joined the waterborne units, serving as a beach master in the Wewak campaign. The war`s end saw him rejoining Ryland Brothers in Newcastle. In 1949, having gained Liberal preselection for the seat of Robertson, north of the Hawkesbury River, he embarked on a career as a parliamentarian that continued until 1964. At a Liberal candidates` convention, he met his future wife, Anne Manning, and they married in 1950. He was counted among Menzies` so-called Forty Niners - candidates whose views and characters were shaped by the Depression and war years. They were reformers. I quote the words of Sir John Carrick in The Australian on 19 January 1998. Acutely conscious of the stark lack of government health, welfare and unemployment services, irritated by the prolonged socialist wartime controls, the threat of bank nationalisation and the divisiveness and religious bigotry of the time, this group had a reforming zeal, reflected in the quality of the social policies of subsequent decades. Roger Dean remained as member for Robertson for 15 years, between 1949 and 1964, fighting and winning 7 elections in that time in a seat that was changing industrially and socially, and that underwent several redistributions. He served on numerous parliamentary committees and delegations. This included being chairman of the Parliamentary Select Committee investigating the grievances of the Yirrkala people in 1963. (Source: http://www.manning.ch/genealogy/f1656.htm)