Teachers share memories

The parties were wild, the jokes were plenty – no wonder their spelling is a shambles.

But if any of the Palmerston North Teachers' College Class of 1961 is worried about this, none of them was showing it yesterday.

Gathered at the Kingsgate Hotel for their 50th reunion, four of the old boys and girls giggled like schoolkids as they flicked through a newly-published book of stories of former class members.

Ahead of the reunion, class member Zeta Robertson had trawled through the White Pages, posted letters and and tracked down emails in a hunt for everyone in the 1961 Teachers' College class.

Every member was asked to write an essay on what they had been up to since those heady days – edited by old boy Darryl Ware, who is now a broadcasting educator. Rifling through the pages of notes, he found many of his old friends had overstepped the word limit, misused grammar and exhibited terrible spelling.

"We asked people for 500 words on the last 50 years – you'd think being teachers they would stick to that.

"I'm thinking `you're teachers, if you put that in an exam you would get zero marks for this because you didn't answer the question'."

Despite their poor efforts, he planned on having a riotous catch-up with his old buddies over the two days of the reunion – though things were not expected to get quite as out of control as in the good ol' days.

"Let me put it this way – back then, you left a party through the windows as the police were coming through the front door. We had some crazy times all right."

- © Fairfax NZ News