IMPRESSIVE TRIBUTE.

Manawatu Standard, Volume XLVII, Issue 79, 2 March 1927, Page 2

IMPRESSIVE TRIBUTE.

MEMORY OP LATE MR. VERNON. OLD BOYS PILE PAST MEMORIAL An impressive tribute to the memory of the late Mr J. E. Vernon, for 16 years rector of the Palmerston North Boys’ High School, was paid at the institution yesterday on the occasion of the celebration of the school’s 26th birthday. Addressing the gathering of upwards of 1000 pupils, old boys, parents, wellwishers and girls from the High School in Pitzherbert Street, Mr J. W. Rutherfurd, of the executive of the Old Boys’ Association, stated that the old pupils felt that a function of the nature of the re-union could not go past without paying tribute to the memory of Mr Vernon. In making his remarks, he felt sure he was voicing the sentiments of all old boys present and particularly those who knew the late Mr Vernon intimately. The school itself and the reputation that it bore were the result of the masterly foundations that he had laid. Old habitß were like old garments—they were hard to discard—and the old habit that past pupils had of linking their memory of the school with that of “Dad” Vernon would last during their lifetime. “When we were at school,” proceeded Mr Rutherfurd, “he earned our respect and affection, and when we took up trades and professions, meeting ups and downs, we found that, not only ha#, he educated us well, but that we were still his old boys. Looking back over the years, and realising the interest he had in the lives of all- of us, we have to acknowledge that he was nat only a great schoolmaster but also a great gentleman. As some tangible evidence of the feeling we have to-day, and of the respect we hold ,his memory in, the old boys are .to place wreaths on the tablet in the school.” s The old pupils, numbering 210, then filed in silence past the memorial in the school on which the two wreaths had been placed.