'Angel Among us': Heroic Harold the Beating Heart of Blacktown Workers

And all at the grand age of 83.

Harold has been the Club's Welfare Officer since 2012 and has picked up the pace rather than slow down even after a cardiac arrest last year put him in hospital.

"Visiting people all the time keeps me going," he says. "You've got to have a purpose to get up in the morning."

That dedication has now been recognised with a ClubsNSW Heart of the Community award, nominated under the title "A Gentle Soul, a Humble Man, an Angel Among Us".

His colleagues described him as "the beating heart of the Blacktown Workers Club and one of the most compassionate, selfless and quietly heroic individuals in the Blacktown community”.

"For many families, he is not just a representative of the Club — he is an angel who brings calm and dignity during life's most painful chapters," the entry read.

Modest Harold, true to form, would rather talk about the job than the award. "It's the community work that the Club does," he says, when asked what he is proudest of.

Harold became a staff member in 1998 until his retirement in 2011. He then took on his impactful volunteer role.

Most mornings start with flowers, picked from a field near his house before anyone at the Club is even awake and dropped off to a widow or widower on his rounds.

"I don't chat that much," he says. "I'll try to get them to lead so I can just carry on the conversation.

"They can't talk as well as they used to. You are encouraging them to have a conversation."

And he also runs the Club's fortnightly dementia group, splitting members into two groups and keeping them talking.

"A lot of people don't realise they've got a bit of dementia," he says.

One former member used to mix him up with his late father, called Harold Snr.

"He saw me coming in, yelled out, 'G'day Harold!' The trouble is, it wasn't me he was thinking of. But you don't want to correct them at all."

Last year, while visiting members at Westmead Hospital in the rain, Harold suffered a cardiac arrest walking through the front door.

"I was out of breath," he says. "That was the last I remember." 

He woke up in hospital and had a triple bypass before a pacemaker was fitted.

A volunteer buggy driver named Vic found him and got help. After surgery, Harold was back doing the rounds.

At home, he has cared for his wife Beverly, 78, who is now in full-time nursing care. "She knows there's nothing wrong with the mind, just the body," he says.

Before his compassionate work, Harold was a clerk from the age of 15 at Wunderlich, an asbestos company, and then worked for James Hardie.

Outside work, he raced speedway for a few years at tracks like Windsor and Port Kembla, while his brother Terry raced for 28 years.

But his connection to the Club goes back further still — to 1959, when he was a boy trailing Harold Snr through the back door on Sundays.

Harold junior joined as a member in 1971 and is now the Club's 34th life member, a lapel badge he proudly wears.

Asked what he would tell someone thinking about retiring, he doesn't hesitate. "Don't sit around. Do something."

Or as his colleagues would say: "He is the first to offer help, the last to seek recognition and a man who avoids the spotlight entirely."