By Bruce Gillespie: A message from Elaine Cochrane, my wife, to all those who’ve known Dick Jenssen over the years and enjoyed his company, his artwork and his articles, died March 7 (Australian date). He was 88.
Elaine writes on our behalf: “Hi everyone: Grace Villa rang me at about 6 this morning to tell me that Dick had just died. He had requested no funeral so we’ll arrange a private cremation. Hard to type through the tears. Much love, Elaine.”
Dick Jenssen has been a part of fandom since 1952, when he was a founder member of the Melbourne Science Fiction Club. Of those who formed the original club, Bob McCubbin, Lee Harding, Race Mathews, Merv Binns, and Dick, only Race Mathews is still alive. Australia’s annual achievement awards, the Ditmars, are named after Dick. (‘Ditmar’ is one of his first names. Dick’s full name was Martin James Ditmar Jenssen, hence ‘Ditmar’ signed onto his artwork, and his usual name, ‘Dick Jenssen’.)
Dick’s career as a meteorologist was distinguished. He was head of Meteorology at Melbourne University when he took early retirement at the age of 55. Dick performed the analysis and wrote the program to produce the first computer-generated weather forecast for the southern hemisphere. That involved a huge amount of original mathematics but he did not write the original equations.
Dick gafiated from fandom after 1971. However, in 1993 Race Mathews enticed him into rejoining a group of his old fannish friends (and some younger, like us) for watching movies and dinner once a month. As mentor and friend, he also adopted Elaine and me as people to whom he could natter about anything, especially science fiction, science, books, and movies.
Dick drew artwork for the MSFC’s fanzines in the early 1950s, but did not take up this interest again until computer graphics developed rapidly during the 1990s. Dick contributed a large number of cover graphics to fanzines and book publishers from then until 2020, especially covers for my SF Commentary and Bill Wright’s Interstellar Ramjet Scoop. He was very delighted to win two Ditmar Awards for Best Fan Artist. He also won the 2016 Rotsler Award for his artwork.
He has suffered major health problems in recent years, at first very severe arthritis, and then cancer during the last four years. After each period of hospitalization, he has been able to return to his flat. However, recently it became very difficult for him to walk at all, so with vast amounts of help from Elaine, as his Power of Attorney, he had moved to the Grace Villa aged care facility near us. His health has deteriorated greatly during the last two months, and he died in his sleep this morning. His life has been well spent, of great value to all those who have known him or been helped by him.
Yesterday Elaine arranged the transfer of his vast library to our place. Thanks very much to those who put a huge amount of effort into this move: Carey Handfield, Justin Ackroyd, Murray MacLachlan, Rob Gerrand, and Gladys Williams.
Update 03/07/2024: Corrected the information about Dick’s work as a meteorologist. Made other minor changes.