Newsletter - February 2009

11/2/2009

February newsletter –

Registrations for 2013 sesquicentennial

* They may be four and a half years away but the school’s 150th celebrations are already stirring considerable interest with more than 100 Old Boys having already registered for the four-day assembly.

A number of venues have already been booked for the various events and the Foundation is also working hard on being able to offer attractive travel and accommodation packages for those attending from outside of the city and from overseas. Details about these will be made known as soon as it’s possible to do so.

If you wish to note your interest in being involved, please do so through an email to the Foundation (info@obhsfoundation.co.nz) or a telephone call (+64 3/4778977), the message to include your full name and years of attendance.

A refundable registration fee of $100 is being levied to assist with some of the costs associated with the early stages of the organisation.

The geographical breakdown of those to registered their interest to date is –

Dunedin – 34; Otago – 9; Southland – 5; Canterbury – 5; other parts of the South Island – 1; Wellington – 4; Auckland – 13; other parts of the North Island – 5; Australia – 14; United Kingdom – 6; United States – 3; Israel – 1; Germany – 1.

And in decade groups, the spread is –

1930s – 1; 1940s – 4; 1950s – 17; 1960s – 11; 1970s – 20; 1980s – 14; 1990s – 17; 2000s – 17.

Re-connection ‘service’

* One of the longer term ambitions for our website is to make it more inter-active, which will allow Old Boys to have dialogue directly with their former class and school mates – similar to Old Friends and FaceBook.

While this may be a little way off, the Foundation is able to assist alumni in their immediate search for other Old Boys by passing on their details.

If you wish to make contact with an old mate but don’t have his contact details, we’re happy to act as the conduit. Simply make contact with the Foundation office (+64 3 4778977, info@obhsfoundation.co.nz) with the name or names of those you wish to re-connect and we’ll send your details on.

Sir Archibald McIndoe – a tribute

* Archibald McIndoe (1914-18) was one of the great medical men of the 20th century, pioneering surgical techniques in the early years of WWII and transforming men’s lives as a result.

Sir Archibald lends his name to the Foundation’s Bequest Society, with its first member being his daughter Mrs Vanora Marland. Sadly, Mrs Marland died on 9th January this year after a long and courageous fight with poor health.

As a tribute to her and the work of her father, we reproduce an Otago Daily Times article penned by Barry Cardno in November 2006:

At a town 50 kilometres south of London, surviving members of an exclusive club formed during World War 2 join together in an annual reunion.

With few exceptions, entry to this club is restricted to British and Commonwealth aircrew who had cheated death by the narrowest of margins, being either horrendously burned, crushed or frostbitten in aircraft crashes; also — to this rule there were no exceptions — they had to have been treated in Ward 3 at Queen Victoria Hospital, East Grinstead, by pioneering plastic surgeon Sir Archibald McIndoe.

Homage was paid to the late Sir Archibald for restoring the faces and lives of his patients — his guinea pigs — in speeches and a rendition of the Guinea Pig Club anthem:

“We are McIndoe’s army, We are his Guinea Pigs.

With dermatomes and pedicles, glass eyes, false teeth and wigs.

And when we get our discharge, We’ll fight with all our might: Per ardua ad astra.

We’d rather drink than fight . . .”

Sir Archibald rose to be revered by the injured airmen, fellow surgeons, matrons, nurses and hospital orderlies alike, for his innovative techniques, skill, and constant search for improvements on repairing hideous wounds — and also for his tireless efforts to restore his patients’ confidence and will to live.

He went on to have many honours bestowed on him, including a CBE in 1944 and knighthood in 1947. He died on April 11, 1960, at the age of 60.

The second child of four, Sir Archibald was born in Dunedin on May 4, 1900. Schooled at Otago Boys’ High School, he studied at the University of Otago Medical School. After graduating with a MB (ChB) in 1924, he was appointed house surgeon at Waikato Hospital.

On July 31, 1924, Sir Archibald married Adonia Aitken, whom he had met in Dunedin. They later had two daughters, Adonia and Vanora.

That same year, Sir Archibald was awarded the first New Zealand Fellowship at the Mayo Clinic in the United States to study pathological anatomy.
From January 1925, the aspiring surgeon got to watch and assist brothers William and Charlie Mayo perform hundreds of abdominal operations at their clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. When Sir Archibald began operating in his own right, he became noted for his quick, cool judgement and smooth precision in the theatre.

Encouraged to pursue a career in the United Kingdom and keen to fulfil an ambition to build a practice of his own, he moved from the United States to London in 1930.

However, to his dismay, work did not come as he had expected. He contacted a distant relative of his in Britain whom he had never met, plastic surgeon Sir Harold Gillies, 18 years his senior and also Dunedin-born.

Sir Harold is considered the father of 20th-century plastic surgery because of the methods and innovations he perfected. He and his team of surgeons performed nearly 12,000 operations, often involving gruesome facial injuries caused by shrapnel and bullets during World War 1. He was knighted in 1930 for his work.

Under tuition from Sir Harold, Sir Archibald learnt the skills of plastic surgery.

At the outbreak of World War 2 in September 1939, Sir Harold was appointed principal plastic surgeon for the army, and Sir Archibald was sent to East Grinstead, where he was entrusted with the task of founding a unit to provide specialist treatment for an entirely new and devastating form of injury unique to airmen, the “Hurricane Burn”, caused by exploding aircraft fuel.

During the Battle of Britain that raged in the skies over southern England between July and October 1940, 35 Hurricane and Spitfire fighter pilots who suffered horrific burns to their faces and hands were taken to the Queen Victoria Hospital for surgery by Sir Archibald.
The standard treatment for a serious flesh burn had been to spray the wound with tannic acid, thus completely drying it out. But because of the drying process, and method of plucking the dead skin off, patients would endure excruciating pain. And the result would leave them looking quite ghastly.

Sir Archibald was convinced there must be a better way.

Noting that the burns of men who crashed in the sea looked to heal better, he switched to bathing his patients in saline water at body temperature. That way, dead skin could be peeled off in a relatively painless manner and, months later, he could set about performing the necessary skin grafts.

In July 1941, some of his patients were chatting, and decided a club would help pass their time in hospital. The name “Guinea Pig Club” was suggested, as a likeness to those animals used for medical experiments.

Under the guise of a drinking club, a committee was duly formed. Sir Archibald was made president. As his patients were all enduring the same hardships, Sir Archibald knew keeping them together would be crucial. He realised that the psychological injuries were as much a concern as the physical ones.

“The Boss” or “Maestro”, as he was known, would chat with “his boys”, join them in singing and playing the piano in the ward, take them for drinks in town, and encourage them to get out in the community. There were times he even took them into London to meet film stars and other celebrities. Even a barrel of beer was kept in the ward.

Sir Archibald, they said, did more than just get them back on track. The plastic surgeon restored their faces and hands, their will to live, and did all he could to get them back into life and achieve the best they could. Relationships between patients and nurses blossomed. Quite a few went on to marry. Others met women from East Grinstead, a place the guinea pigs referred to as “the town that never stared”.

Sir Archibald told his boys they could wear their Royal Air Force uniforms, as opposed to the standard hospital blues, and in doing so retain their proud identity.

When asked at the reunion what the Guinea Pig Club meant to him, a patient of Sir Archibald’s, William “Bill” Foxley (84), replied in one word: “Everything.”

Mr Foxley signed up for the RAF in 1943 at the recruiting centre in Lord’s Cricket Ground, London, and was sent to the Initial Training Wing at Scarborough. He was kitted out and completed 12 hours of flight training in Tiger Moths. When it came time to be posted for the next phase of training, he recalled, “being so upset . . . when I saw my name was not in the pilot category, but in the navigator category instead”.

Still, orders were orders.

At 11.20pm on March 17, 1944, at RAF Training Base Wymeswold, Leicestershire. the Wellington bomber he was in crashed on take-off. It immediately caught fire. Miraculously, Mr Foxley, his American pilot and an Australian bomb-aimer got out unscathed.

“When it hit, I got out pretty quickly, but remember hearing the wireless operator and rear gunner screaming their heads off for help.”

He ran back into the blazing wreck to try to get them out.

“The last I can recall before losing consciousness is thinking ‘the metal looks white hot’.”

His mates perished.

Mr Foxley, who was 20 years old at the time, was taken to the RAF Hospital, Cosford. There he was bandaged and cared for the best they knew how. About two weeks later, while on one of his regular inspections of the four RAF hospitals, Sir Archibald found Mr Foxley and had him moved to East Grinstead immediately.

The fire had burned all the skin on his face; he’d lost sight in one eye, and much of it in the other; he suffered severe contracture of his hands, and his fingers were reduced to stumps. Mr Foxley said a month passed before he regained consciousness. He could not see anything at all for three months, and his hands were kept bound for much longer.

He said his hands felt like they had been melted solid. “My only thought while I was blacked out was ‘when am I going to get flying again’. I had no idea of the extent of my injuries until seeing myself in a bathroom mirror. My initial reaction was ‘who the hell is that?’.”

Sir Archibald used a pedicle skin operation to transfer healthy skin from his chest to his face. Mr Foxley underwent 40 operations and was in and out of the Queen Victoria Hospital for three and-a-half years.

Mr Foxley says three of his closest mates are also Guinea Pigs, and they plan to keep meeting regularly.

“We all enjoy life,” he says, with a twinkle in his good eye. “We are Peter Pans — we’ll never grow up.”

And despite this 65th annual reunion having been called the last, many of the men present finished the weekend festivities by saying: “See you again next year.”

Although the war these men fought has lasted a lifetime, their indomitable spirit, it seems, will not weaken.

Tracking Old Boys

* Thank you to all those who have continued to assist with contact details for ‘lost’ Old Boys in recent weeks.

With the school’s 150th anniversary celebrations now under five years away tracking the whereabouts of all living 17,000 alumni is high priority and any contact information you have for those not on our newsletter database would be welcome.

The following boys have slipped off our postal or email lists in the last couple of months. If you know where they now reside, or have any point of contact for them, please let me know:

Bryan McCormack (1982-86). Was in Papakura

Stephen Coombes (1978-81). Was in Dunedin

John Sligo (1958-52). Was in Sydney

Geoff Asher (1962-65). Was in Melbourne

Rhys Jones (1999). Was in Wales

Brayden Hill (2002-05). Was in Central Otago

Andrew Chang (2005). Was in Dunedin

Paul Culbert (1986-89). Was in the United States

Blair Watson (1995-99). Was in London

John Starkey (1966-69). Was in Wellington

Dave Jeffery (1987-91). Was in Dunedin

Jeremy Harvey (1997-2000). Was in Perth

Alister Shields (1977). Was in Sudan with the Save the Children organization

Victor Smith (1998). Was in Auckland

Steve Tripp (1979-82). Was a medical practitioner in Dunedin

Robert Whyte (1986-88). Was in Cairns

John Capon (1995-97). Was in Christchurch and is now in London

Rod Carson (1962-66). Was in Auckland

Foundation members

* Since the January newsletter, the following Old Boys and connections with the school have made pledges or donations and have been registered as Members of the Foundation –

Dr John Goodyear (1935-39) – Friend
Peter Warren (1965-69) – Old Boy’s life membership
Mac McDonald (1942-46) – Friend
Dr John Grigor (1954-57) – Fellow

Donation rebate benefits

* A gentle reminder of the new donation rebates now operating in New Zealand.

Those who have made or will make a donation in the current financial year (1 April 2008 to 31 March 2009) will receive a full third in rebate when their tax returns are completed, no matter the amount they donated.

Previously the maximum amount an individual or business could claim was $630 (representing a third of $1,890). Anything above that amount on an annual basis resulted in no additional rebate for the benefactor. That has now changed and a significant number of Foundation members will benefit from the returns they receive as from April this year.

The Foundation is indebted to their generosity and foresight.

Those contemplating making a donation in the current financial year will also benefit immediately with all gifts made up to 31st March qualifying for the rebate – as will those who support the Foundation and its vision in the years ahead.

Congratulations

* Steve (Stephen Ernest) Wilson (1968-71) is the second Old Boy to receive the Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit in the 2009 New Year’s Honours … and he will join Col Brendan Fraher (1965-70) at the investiture in May.

Steve, who received the MNZM for his services for business, completed his intermediate engineering year at Otago University before finishing his BE (First Class Hons, Mechanical) at Canterbury in 1975.

After various stints as assistant engineer (Christchurch Electricity Department), design engineer, engineering manager and General Manager (HE Gardner & Sons), he served as Managing Director of Reese Flooring and Reese Plastics before taking the MD’s role with Lane Walker Rudkin Hosiery & Underwear and then Arthur Ellis Ltd.

Between 1994 and 1996 Steve was the Chief Executive of Donaghys Industries Ltd and since ’96 has filled the role of Managing Director of Talbot Plastics Ltd in Christchurch.

In 2001 he was made a Fellow of the New Zealand Institute of Management.

Steve has directorships with a number of companies, has served two separate two-year terms as President of Plastics New Zealand along with 14 years on the national executive, he is a past executive and council member of the Canterbury Manufacturers’ and Exporters’ Association, is a past Chairman and a current member of the Governance Board of the New Zealand Plastics Centre of Excellence, and is a past director of the Canterbury Hockey Association.

Steve says that two things which drive him are being a small part of other people’s success and assisting people achieve what they are capable of.

He has been with Talbot Plastics, a firm he partly owns, for 13 years and in that time has overseen monumental growth and staff numbers rising from 30 to more than 100.

During his presidency of Plastics New Zealand, Steve assisted with the creation of a strategic plan to grow industry sales from $2 billion to $4 billion by 2015 with an emphasis placed on exporting. To speed this process, a partnership was established with Auckland University with the objective of creating internationally leading concepts.

He has also been involved with the development of new industry-specific training courses with the aim, there again, to be clever and creative.

As an example, Talbot Plastics has a relationship with Tait Electronics where plastic casing was developed for a new portable radio. This gave both companies the opportunity to be a little more creative than might have been the case if Tait had been dealing with an Asian supplier at long distance.

Talbot Plastics is also working alongside Fisher & Paykel Healthcare to design a different housing for a sleep apnoea humidifier and has formed a joint venture with an Australian firm to make Christchurch city’s new wheelie bins.

* Those who attended Otago Boys’ between 1986 and 1990 will well recall the musical talents of Jeffrey Henderson.

Not surprisingly at the end of his time at Otago Boys’, Jeffrey was awarded a scholarship to the Conservatorium of Music in Wellington and graduated three years later as the top student for 1993.

Since that time Jeffrey has played the world, principally in the jazz and creative music fields and in November 2008 he was awarded a New Zealand Arts Foundation New Generation Award.

The following entry is from the Arts Foundation’s brochure publicising Jeffrey’s inclusion:

Jeff Henderson is a Wellington-based musician and an integral part of the New Zealand improvised music scene. Committed to alternative music and venues, Jeff is a well-known solo improviser and multi-instrumentalist. A saxophone and clarinet specialist, he also plays guitar, banjo, piano, percussion, and anything else that the music requires. Jeff has performed with internationally renowned musicians such as Richard Nunns and Marilyn Crispell. He has an extensive history as an accompanist, participant in live musical theatre and other collaborative events. Jeff has also been involved in film, received major commissions, and features on many recorded releases. He has toured internationally, performed at major festivals, and currently performs with the bands Fertility Festival, The Melancholy Babes and Colin McCabre. He produces the Om the Space Festival, operates Happy performance venue and runs iiii records.

Jeffrey is part of a long line of Henderson Old Boys.

His great great grandfather Matthew Henderson (1887-90) was the Dunedin City electrical engineer for 24 years and also served as a city councillor; his great uncle Allan Henderson (1923-25) served on the Lincoln College Board of Governors; another great uncle Roly Henderson (1932-36), an RNZAF pilot was killed in action during World War II; his father John Henderson (1954-58) was a long-serving engineer with the Dunedin City Council, served as President of the Dunedin Rotary Club (1999-2000) and District Governor for Rotary District 9980 (2003-04) and is a Life Member of Otago Cricket; his uncle Matt Henderson (1956-60) was Principal of Waimate District High School for many years; and his brother Andrew Henderson (1984-88) who graduated with a BA from Otago majoring in Maori Studies in 1991 and went on to obtain a Master of Regional and Resource Planning (with Distinction) from Otago in 1994. In doing so he became the first graduate of the Department of Maori Studies to complete a Masters Degree. Andrew is a shareholder/Director of Boulder Planning (Otago), a resource management company based in Dunedin.

* It’s a little while ago but a feat certainly still worthy of a mention.

In October 2001 Brin McGeorge (1948-49) shot not one but two holes-in-one at the Cromer Golf Club in Sydney. And better still, his aces were back to back.

The 27 handicapper joined an elite membership of players to have had consecutive holes-in-one in the same round. The first known double was by the legendary professional Norman von Nida at the Blackheath Golf Club in New South Wales in 1939 where he aced a par 3 then a par 4.

John Hutchin, an English professional emulated the feat in England in 1971, while Sue Prell remains the only woman to have scored consecutive holes-in-one which she recorded at Sydney’s Chatswood Golf Club in 1977.

Six months later Brin, a former New Zealand epee and foil fencing champion, added a 3rd hole-in-one.

Annual Foundation golf tournament

* Old Boys and connections wishing to play in the Foundation’s fourth annual Golf Classic – to be staged at the St Clair course in Dunedin on Friday, 20th March – are invited to register their interest by contacting the Foundation office (03/4778977, info@obhsfoundation.co.nz).

Fees are the same as for last year’s tournament - $140 for teams of four and $35 for individual players.

Old Boys in the news

* When Tom Davie (1999-2003) was seriously injured in a training accident in September 2004, his sporting ambitions could well have stalled – but instead they changed his approach to life.

Tom was a talented athlete who seemed destined to reach Commonwealth Games, world championship and Olympic standard. At the age of 18 he won the New Zealand senior men’s triple jump title in early 2004, breaking Dave Norris’s 46 year national junior record with his effort of 15.62 metres in the process, and was also the national junior long jump record holder with a leap of 7.60 metres. He still holds both records.

Then came his horrific training injury, rupturing two ligaments and breaking his left knee capsule along with severing a nerve in his lower leg. Tom still has no feeling in the lower portion of that left leg or his foot and is never likely to.

However, he never lost hope over the next two years as he struggled through six operations to mend his injuries. His perseverance was rewarded in late-January when he was named in the New Zealand bobsleigh team for the world championships at Lake Placid in the United States later this month.

"I'm ecstatic," he said.

"A year ago I didn't think I'd be representing New Zealand in a different sport. It saved my sporting career. I was getting injured heaps trying to get back into jumping."

It has opened the door to an Olympic dream that he first had at the age of 15.

"It's the highest thing you can do in sport," he said. "That's my dream. If I didn't have a goal that big I probably wouldn't be doing it."

When Tom got the call from his strength and conditioning coach, Angus Ross, to have a trial for the bobsleigh team it opened up new horizons for him.

"It was a chance of going to the Olympics. I couldn't turn it down."

The aim at the world championships is to at least make the top 16. A top performance would give the team confidence for next season's World Cup events that determine which countries qualify for the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver.

"We want to show the rest of the world what we can do. It’s just a matter of getting enough ice time."

Does he have any regrets over the serious injury that ended his athletics career in 2004?

"At the start I was a bit depressed because athletics was my life back then. I had just returned from the world junior championships where I tore my hamstrings and could not compete. I was down and out and wondering what I was going to do.

"If I had a time machine I don't think I'd go back and stop it. I'm competing in international sport again. I'll probably go higher on the bobsled than I would have in athletics."

Angus motivated Tom to keep going when he was ready to give up his attempts to get back into athletics. The most difficult part of the transition from athletics was to increase his weight from 80kg to 100kg. That requires eating up to six or seven meals a day.

Training for the world championships on the bobsleigh involves pushing a 113kg sled on the indoor track and lifting weights at the South Island Academy of Sport in Dunedin six days a week along with several trips to America’s Cup meetings in the United States and Canada. There the New Zealand triallists picked up several podium finishes, including two third placings and, at one stage before the European season opened, they were ranked second in the world.

The sled speeds down the icy slopes at between 120kmh and 140kmh. The first time Tom was in a sled was at Park City at the Drivers School in Utah in the United States.

"The scariest part [on a track] is crashing and scraping your head on the ice. If you don't keep your shoulder inside the sled it gets burnt." He has some ruined clothes and a scarred shoulder as evidence of the damage that can be done.

Tom, a talented rugby and basketball player who was named the Best All Round Sportsman in his final year at school along with being part of the Otago Daily Times’ Class Act that year, still has a yearning to return to athletics but his complete focus at present is on the bobsleigh.

* After 17 years as principal of Wellington’s Rongotai College Graeme Jarratt (1963-66) is set to step aside.

Graeme will retire in April this year, noting he was keen to end his career “whilst I was still seen as being more effective than less effective. I wanted to leave when I was confident the school was in really good shape."

When he applied for the position, the board at Rongotai College was looking for someone who could make some positive changes for the school.

"I wanted the school I was principal of to be a place where students felt safe and were happy in their learning, which is a real issue in schools."

His main aim was to build a school climate where students felt supported by staff and comfortable in their relationships with other students.

"I believe that's a really good basis for learning - if you feel comfortable where you are, you are likely to learn better,” he said.

One of his best initiatives as principal was establishing the non-violence policy: no verbal or physical violence, no property damage and no substance abuse.

"It's about insisting and establishing standards you believe are standards for good behaviour," he said.

Teenage boys had not changed much over the years, but the social issues they faced had. Broken homes, social websites and gang culture trends are realities faced by many young people today.

The most rewarding aspect of being principal was seeing students achieve what they set out to do.

"Whether it be in the classroom or on the sports field - when students see an improvement in their self-esteem as a result of that. I think that's something every student can achieve."

Graeme began his teaching career at South Otago High School and Balclutha High School. He also taught in Hawke's Bay before a promotion moved him down to Wellington for the role of deputy principal at Heretaunga College.

He hasn’t thought so far ahead as to what his next plans will be.

"When you're headmaster, 16-hour days are not unusual, so I just need a bit of space to take time and think about what I'll do next. But I'll definitely be doing something."

He will miss contact with the students the most, especially weekends, when he attends their extra-curricular activities.

"Often what you hear about teenagers in the news is what they do wrong. But 98 per cent of them do great things."

Shorts

* Neil Gillespie (1974-77) is the Asset Development Manager at Pioneer Generation in Alexandra and is also the chairman of the Cromwell Community Board. The Board has recently slashed its 10-year budget by around 20%, taking a brutally honest approach about the need for some of the projects on its books.

* Richard Morgan (1969-73), Otago rugby halfback (1978-81) and a former New Zealand curling representative is the current president of the Central Otago Trotting Club. His father Jim is a former holder of that position. Richard is the father of Elliott Morgan (2001-05), a member of the New Zealand junior curling team which performed strongly at the Pacific Championships in China in mid-January.

* Graeme Still (1974-76) is Dunedin’s principal rural fire officer and was involved in the recent imposition of a total fire ban to apply to 80% of the Dunedin city area. The ban came into force on Waitangi Day and followed the ban in urban Dunedin and Mosgiel.

Recent deaths

* We extend our condolences to the families of the following Old Boys –

Peter Melvyn Munro (1966-70), died in Dunedin on 17th January 2009. Peter was the brother of Christopher Munro (1969-72), Robert Munro (1970-72) and Richard Munro (1973-74).

Derek John Haslemore (1941-42), died in Dunedin on 19th January 2009. Derek was the brother of Bernard Haslemore (1941-42) and ‘Mac’ (Malcolm Geoffrey) Haslemore (1944-45).

Grant (John Grant) Barrett (1963-67), died in Christchurch on 1st February 2009, aged 59.

Charles Hamilton (1953-57), died in Blenheim on 1st February 2009, aged 69. Charles, a retired school teacher and a hockey player of note, was the father of Peter Hamilton (1975-79) and Andrew Hamilton (1982-86).

Roy William Watt (1948-49), died in Dunedin on 4th February 2009, aged 75. Roy was the brother of the late Phillip Watt (1944-45) and the brother-in-law of the late Peter Scorgie (1934-35).

John William Cuthbertson (1931-33), died in Dunedin on 6th February 2009, aged 86

Geoff (Geoffrey Frederick) Love (1943-44), died in Alexandra on 6th February 2009, aged 80.

* We also extend our sympathies to –

Laurie Forbes (1984-88) whose father Don died in Blenheim on 13th January 2009.

Allan Carson (1934-39) whose mother-in-law Annie Bremner died in Dunedin on 17th January 2009. Annie was the aunt of Les Stewart (1947-51) and Russell Stewart (1959-60).

Ronnie Omerovic (1977-80) whose mother Janet died in Whakatane on 17th January 2009.

Brian Boyes (1962-65) whose mother Joy died in Dunedin on 18th January 2009.

Ken Dreaver (1957-62), Brendon Dreaver (1963-68) and Christopher Dreaver (1972-77) whose mother Rhoda died in Nelson on 20th January 2009. Rhoda was the mother-in-law of George Bartlett (1953-56).

Robert Fisk (1958) and Angus Fisk (1960-61) whose mother Florence died in Dunedin on 21st January 2009. Florence was the grandmother of Vincent Fisk (1982-83) and Curtis Fisk (1986-88).

Richard Richan (1967-70), the late Gilbert Richan (1968-70) and Robert Richan (1971-74) whose father Norman died in Gore on 22nd January 2009. Norman was the grandfather of Joel Richan (1995-99) and Adam Richan (1999-2003).

Bob Woodhill (1960-63) whose wife Barbara died in Rangiora on 28th January 2009. Barbara was the step-mother of Mike Woodhill (1984-87) and Darryn Woodhill (1986-87) and Bob is the brother of Ted Woodhill (1950-54) and Ray Woodhill (1952-53).

Chris Timms (1977-81) whose father Ron died in Dunedin on 1st February 2009. Ron was the brother-in-law of Bruce Dixon (1949).

Jon Symon (1969-74) whose father David died on 3rd February 2009.

John Oskam (1974-76) whose father Bert died in Dunedin on 9th February 2009. Bert was the father of the late Mark Oskam (1975-78) and the grandfather of Garett Shore (1985-89), Luke Shore (1994-98) and Josh Oskam (1992-2001).

Garry Watson (1969-73) whose father Les died in Dunedin on 9th February 2009.

Steve Davie

Chief Executive