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Athlone Primary
School was founded in 1959 by a group of local mothers. We celebrate our
50th birthday this year and hope that many past and present pupils and
their parents will join us for the various events we have planned. We have had some interesting calls and emails from past pupils and parents. A few of them are published below. if you would like to send the school a birthday message or some of your memories please email us on athloneinfo@futurenet.co.za **************************
Message from Twan Potgieter of Hilton All good wishes on your 50th
anniversary! My children spent their primary years at Athlone in the 80's
- what happy memories. Mr. Metcalfe, Mrs. Bryson, Pat Rudling, Pat
Brodziak, Cecile Murray etc - thank you !
From Hlengiwe Radebe
I wish you all the best as you move towards 100 years and
keep up the excellent work. From Amanda van Rensburg - Pietermaritzburg
I was very fortunate to receive a teaching post at Athlone.
Later I discovered just how fortunate I was. I was made to feel welcome
and management and staff were and still are to this day friendly, helpful
and accommodating and have become more than just work colleagues. Do you recognize anyone in this original photograph of the founding members of the school. It is estimated that the photo was taken in the very early days of the school, possibly 1959 or 1960. Athlone Primary School lost a lot of archive material in the fire that destroyed our media centre in 2005. Please contact us if you have any material that may be of interest to the school. (Contact us.) Miss Jackson, Headmistress from 1959 until 1967 is pictured on the right of the picture.
Third row -
Trevor Tenant, Jonothan Dales, Graham Whitelaw, Linda Rubelli, Wendy
Morley, Jenny Mags, Diane, Moira Henderson, Lesley Bultitude, Robert
Sharak, Andrew Moxley. These photographs were recently donated to the school. We think they show some of the original 1959 pupils. Please let us know if you recognize anyone. Once again click to enlarge.
From Mr Mike Moon - pupil 1959
Being one of the founding Class 1 pupils at Athlone, I was
interested to hear of the school's 50th anniversary.
The class photos on your website - for which you wanted
names - are of course of the 1959 founding Class 1 (as it was known then,
not Grade 1) as it progressed through the years. The result is that some
of us are in all of those pix!
From left to right as displayed on the site: Standard 3 in
1963, Standard 1 in 1961 (this grade must have been divided into two
separate classes) and Standard 5 in 1965. I’ve listed below the pupil
names that I can remember.
Looking at these photos, memories come tumbling back – too
numerous and inconsequential to mention here.
But I do remember the first school day at the brand new
Athlone Primary quite well – petrified toddlers being coaxed into the
Class 1 room by our mothers. The teacher was Miss Lawrie (later Mrs Rhind).
The headmistress was the admirable Miss Jackson, a school ma’am of the old
order – formidable in appearance and a stickler for form, but generous and
caring beneath it all, as we came to realise.
The most vivid recollection of the first days at Athlone,
I’m afraid, were several children wetting themselves in class. I
remembered being amazed that five-year-olds still did such things.
Looking at my old school report from 1959, I see that the
only three subjects were Reading, Writing and Number, of which I was OK at
the first two. I’ve spent my entire adult life working with words –
suggesting that patterns are set very early.
From the class photos, you’ll notice that the number of
boys declined year by year. This was, I recall, at least partly due to
Athlone not offering rugby as a sport and fathers being anxious that their
sons should have a grounding in the game before they hit high school.
I also remember that Athlone was among the first primary
schools to abolish class merit gradings, so we never knew who was cleverer
than whom – though it was quite obvious that Margaret Forbes was by far
the smartest of our lot. So, when I got to Alex, I thought I’d failed
miserably in the first term – only to discover I’d come third out of a
hundred or so boys. It was then I realised that Athlone must have provided
a rather good grounding.
Best wishes for the 50th anniversary.
Regards,
Mike Moon The first function related to our 50th birthday was a Family Fun Day on Saturday, 28 March 2009 featuring Gladi-Antics! Great fun was had by all by all participants and the day proved to be most successful. A lot of hard work was done by many parent and teacher volunteers and the day went off without a hitch! Thank you to all the stall holders, parents who ran the food stalls and staff of the school who worked cheerfully all day to get the school's anniversary year off to a tremendous start! Athlone Primary School is the success that it is because of this enthusiastic support base! 17th April 2009 - Formal Birthday Assembly
A wonderful 50th
birthday celebration was held at the school
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