What started out as a Facebook group for Waimea College students of the 80s, has grown into a reunion for all decades through the school’s 68-year history.
Stu Reid and Katrina Smith grew up a block apart in Richmond and went to the same primary and intermediate before Waimea College and say everyone pretty well knew each other back then.
While Katrina was “born and bred and never left” Richmond, Stu joined the navy at the end of the school year in 1986, but returned to Richmond in 2000 where he found the friendships with his former school buddies was still strong.
They had good memories from those school days, so they started a Facebook page and a few years ago held an informal get together – and then another a couple of years later.
“We had two mini reunions, going to the pub for a night, and had over 100 people each time,” Stu says. “They were mostly from the 80s and even the old principal, Mr Price, came along.”
That led to more people wanting to join, including a former student Tim Walker, who lives in Australia and is “desperate for a reunion” to the point of becoming the third member of the committee organising this reunion.
“And he’s the one who cracks the whip,” Katrina says.
The end result is an ‘All Year’s Reunion’ at Labour Weekend, 24-26 October, designed to ‘reconnect, reminisce and relive the spirit of Waimea’.
They already have people signing up who were founding students at the school back in 1957 and also teachers who were there at the beginning.
Stu says any number of people can attend the reunion activities over the weekend, though a planned dinner will only be able to seat 200, so it will be first in, first seated.
For Stu and Katrina, it is all about the 80s though, when they were teenagers at Waimea College and made friendships that have lasted through the decades.
“Everybody knew everybody and knew everybody’s mums and dads,” Katrina remembers.
“We didn’t knock on our friends’ doors,” Stu continues. “We just walked in.”
A school band, Patchwork RAPP, had a strong following in the weekends and Katrina admits to being one of the groupies, while Stu remembers a few parties in the Foxhill hall.
“And at school we were the first year with computers,” Katrina says.
“We had a computer suite with five or six computers in it!”
It’s those memories and the friendships they made that have prompted the reunion, which they stress is not an official school reunion but a get-together for anyone who wants to catch up with people and reminisce about their high-school days.
Anyone interested in the reunion can email stu.reid11@gmail.com
