To celebrate 60 years since they left, last month 15 members of a class that attended Timaru Boys’ High School between 1960 and 1964 paid a visit to their old school for a reunion.
Rob Crozier, who had also helped arrange a West School reunion the same weekend, said that since he would already be in Timaru for a primary school reunion, he thought he should also organise one for his secondary school.
They were a class of 30, he said.
"Three of them were from Kenya, they were Colombo Plan students [a programme that sponsored students to study in New Zealand], seven had died and I discovered from my research we were down to about 20.
"I decided to go back to the ones who started in 1960 and contacted a few of them, we were all contemporaries of each other, at some point we were all either in the same class or same year.
"That was the response I got, there were people trying to come from as far as Spain, we had four or five apologies, one guy was coming from Australia but two days before he was due to come over he got called away to China.
"So we ended with 15 but that’s still a pretty good turnout really."
It was quite tricky trying to track everyone down, he said.
"It was a real mission but it was fun and we had a good time."
They met at Timaru Boys’ High School on a Sunday morning and caught up with each other for an hour before being shown around the school by rector Dave Thorp.
They were also joined by their former teacher Bruce Leadley.
It was good fun identifying each other, he said.
"That was the first part because I forgot to make name badges.
"In a way, that made it more fun — I recognised nearly all of them but there was one guy who I just couldn’t place.
"I knew I knew him but couldn’t place him, and then when he opened his mouth to speak I knew straight away who it was."
The school now looked very different from how he had remembered it, he said.
"I think there is only one part of one building that’s still the same.
"There was a B block that we used to go to that still looked very much the same as ours.
"It was very interesting."
They turned out to be quite the successful class, he said.
"I said to the headmaster that he should be proud of what the school did for us.
"There were two dentists, a GP, a couple of research scientists, Ross Lund who is Lund and Co, a landscape architect, a lawyer, a couple of university professors and a guy that runs a franchising consultancy.
"We were 6A, which was kind of the top tier."
It was only the fourth time Mr Crozier had returned to Timaru since leaving in 1972.
The reunion was just terrific, he said.
"I had some trepidations about organising it and I’m sure everyone did about going to it but I think everyone was delighted they did in the end.
"It was just a really, really good time."
