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RITA PRING / RITA MCGILLIEN / RITA SOLOMON AUSTRALIA’S FIRST GUIDE DOG FOR THE BLIND TRAINER

Rita Florence Ruth Pring was born on 4th October 1914 at Willaston in South Australia, the fourth of five children. Her mother died in Pt Pirie, SA when she was four years’ old and her father sent the children to relatives with Rita going to various places in SA and Victoria. The family were reunited after her father remarried in Cessnock, NSW in March, 1925. She had twice contracted diphtheria and then contracted meningitis in 1926, when she lost her sight. Her siblings played together in the bush and Rita wondered if she might be able to train their family dog, “Sooty”, however he was too small and could not concentrate, however the thought remained.

The family moved to Sydney in 1928 and Rita asked for and was allowed to be admitted to the Blind Institute as its youngest inmate, staying there and learning Braille and typing which she found most useful.

Around 1832 the family moved to Wollongong where her father ran a boarding house followed by establishing the business Pringle’s Pie Shop in Crown Street. She worked there making dough, cleaning windows including standing on awnings to do so plus anything else as required.

In 1937 the family had a different dog, a black curly-coated retriever named “Chief”. Rita still had ambitions of training a dog to assist her and started training “Chief”, which worked out very well for her, although there were many trials and tribulations involved along the way.

During this period she leant the violin and piano by the Braille method. Her new independence led her to Melbourne where there were more opportunities for the blind and during world War 2 she worked at various places including making ice-cream at Peters and working in the darkroom at Kodak. “Chief” was her companion on a short swivel lead. She worked as a volunteer visitor to the blind and deaf, which was part of the service she gave back and was awarded a Life Membership of the Royal Blind Society in later years.

In 1949 after the War she married John Victor “Jack” McGillien and in 1954 they moved back to Wollongong, where she started and was President of the Wollongong Blind Group, a social group for the blind plus used her house as a venue for cane-making and basket weaving with a tutor from the Blind Institute attending from Sydney.

Jack died in 1961 and Rita moved back to Melbourne and found work as a Braille translator. In 1963 she married Frank Solomon and lived in Caulfield for the next seventeen years. Frank had a paper run and Rita was his “delivery” person throwing papers out of the window on command. She started a tape club for the blind community and became involved with CB radios. In 1980 they both moved to Gwyneville in Wollongong, New South Wales. Rita took over the social club which she had established and had been run in her absence by her sister Maisie and Maisie’s daughter Margaret, moving it to her home. She was also the President and Committee Member of the Illawarra Visually Impaired Centre. “She was a regular and much loved visitor to schools, amazing students with her stories, her ability to peel potatoes and thread a needle using her tongue! Like everyone who saw them, students were stunned by her beautiful prize-winning knitting , her leatherwork and her cane baskets.”

Rita lost her husband Frank in 1996 then herself died in 1997 at the age of 82, having had seven dogs to look after her.

In 1926 Rita tried to train her first guide dog, “Sooty”.

In 1937 Rita trained her first guide dog, “Chief”.

In 1947 there was an article on “Chief” and Rita in “The Girl” Annual magazine, some ten years after “Chief” became probably Australia’s first guide dog for the blind.

In 1951 the first Guide Dog Association in Australia was formed in Perth

In 1993 the Guide Dog Association of NSW/ACT used the story of Rita as an example of what a guide dog can do for a person and as a means to raise funds and awareness.

There were many articles on Rita in the local Wollongong newspapers and a file on her in the Wollongong Central Library.