Phyllis Mook, jitterbug star and pocket dynamo
The Mook family, an institution in the Hunter area for many decades, was justly famous for many reasons: Chinese restaurants, fruit shops, SP bookmaking, charitable work and – perhaps most of all to people who lived through the 1940s – producing the city’s best-known jitterbug star. Phyllis Mook was born in 1926 and grew up familiar with her family’s businesses. She worked in the fruit and vegetable shops and sometimes, according to her daughter Teresa Purnell, played the role of “cockatoo” or lookout at the family’s SP betting shop (known as “Mum’s”) in Beaumont Street, Hamilton.…