The death has occured of Daphne Hilton (Ceeney) formerly of the twin towns, elder sister to Poss, Eric and Rod, at the age of 82. Daughter of Rita and Pat Ceeney who were the local taxi drivers for many years, Daphne loved sport as a child. Daphne will be remembered by many in the district as she grew up and went to school here. After a riding accident which occured when she was a teenager, crossing Albury Street on a horse, Daphne became a paraplegic. Spending considerable time in Rehabilitation Centres in Sydney she developed her sporting skills in areas such as basketball, javelin, shot-put, swimming and archery to name a few. In 1960 Daphne became the only Australian female to attend the inaugural Paralympics in Rome. In those days athletes had to raise their own funding. Residents of the twin towns hosted street stalls to assist this process. She won roughly 60% of the teams medals at those games. A civic reception was held to honour her performance.
Daphne then went on to compete in the 1962 Commonwealth games winning medals in archery,javelin,shot put crawl 50m, breaststroke, backstroke among others. In 1964 she competed in the Tokyo Paralympics and won a swag of gold, silver and bronze medals over different events. Daphne went on to compete in the Jamaican Paralympics and won 13 medals, she certainly never did things by halves. She was also the only female member of the Australian Wheelchair Basketball team. She retired after the Tel Aviv Paralympics where she won yet more medals. She decided to take up lawn bowls. However, when the sport was excluded from the games in 2002 she went on to win a silver and a bronze at the World Wheelchair Games. She then retired for good. She had the honour of opening the Sydney Paralympics and she carried the torch from Parliament House.
Daphne married Frank Hilton and later became the first person with paraplegia in Australia, maybe the world, to give birth to twin girls Nichole and Rachel. It was necessary for her to spend quite a length of time in hospital during her pregnancy. Induction into the NSW Hall of Champions came about in 2014. She was quite possibly the only athlete of her time to achieve medals in 5 different sports. Daphne will be remembered as one of the twin towns favourite daughters. To have have achieved so much in her life time was quite remarkable, but she also achieved so many “firsts” The Twin Town Times would like to extend our condolences to Daphne’s family. Daphne’s funeral service was held on Tuesday. RIP Daphne.
