Marist Old Boy, Peter Ross cannot boast about his university degrees or HSC marks, but his thoughtfulness and initiative has made an enormous difference to thousands of people over the years.
It was 1955 when Peter, at the young age of 14, was forced to leave school to work with his father doing a milk run as his father couldn’t afford to pay someone else to do it. His father’s decision obviously had a huge impact on Peter’s life as did his father’s death in 1987. At that time, Peter was working at Flemington Markets and rather than take any money from the family for the funeral, the Parish Priest at the time said “don’t worry about it, I’ll call you sometime”.
And call him he did. That call was a request to assist St Vincent de Paul in providing hampers to the needy, a call which sparked the creation of the Manning Foundation which has gone on to help thousands of displaced, needy and lonely people.
Today, the Manning Foundation provides a whole raft of services to help people – from emergency food supplies, clothing for the needy to assistance with care and transport for the infirmed. The Foundation goes one step further with an educational program to help people to help themselves, to give them the skills that they need to be able to support themselves.
The annual Christmas for the Needy lunch, which saw the birth of the Foundation in 1987, continued providing a Christmas lunch and company to those who would otherwise have no one to celebrate Christmas with until 2020.
Peter explains, “When the priest rang me that Christmas after Dad died, all he wanted me to do was to go around the markets and ask for donations of food so that we could put together hampers. Peter says, “I thought, what good is an apple if you have no teeth, what use is a pineapple if you can’t use a knife to cut it.” Peter thought he’d go one better and reached out to his old mate Steve Manning who ran the Family Inn at Rydalmere. “Together we organised the Christmas lunch in Steve’s restaurant which could only seat 40 people at the time, but everyone pitched in – I got potatoes, pumpkin and onions from the markets and a whole bunch of other contacts donated food and we whipped up a storm!”. And what’s a party without entertainment? “I called another mate, Col Joye, and he was very happy to perform at the lunch for many years thereafter” boasts Peter.
Col, who is now the Patron of the Manning Foundation was the first Australian pop artist ever to have a No. 1 record nationally and the first Australian to have a record on the American Billboard Charts. He was also the first recording artist to be inducted into the Aria Hall of Fame and was awarded the Order of Australia (AM) in 1981.
From there the Christmas lunch grew and every year the Foundation hosted Christmas lunch for some 230 people until 2020 when the COVID pandemic impacted on the viability of the luncheon.
Today the Foundation, named after Steve, is driven by 30 volunteers who are dedicated to helping the marginalised. “They are an amazing bunch of people who receive absolutely no money in return for their time and they don’t even ask for the return of out of pocket expenses”, says a very proud Peter. The relationship with Marist College Eastwood is further strengthened with Lorriane Bonisoli and ex-student Tony Bonisoli, who attended Marist Eastwood with Peter, directing the activities of the Manning Foundation.
Peter himself, who served as a Police Officer before starting his own food processing business, is a Board member along with Steve’s son, James and others. Peter also serves on a community watch program as an adviser on security issues and was the Event Organiser for the World WaterSki Racing Championships in NSW in 1997 where he was the runner up following a win in Belgium in 1995. And for those of you who are wondering..… no, Peter wasn’t on the skis, he was driving the boat!