SOCIAL AND PERSONAL

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 83, Issue 289, 7 December 1939, Page 10

SOCIAL AND PERSONAL

Mrs. J. C. Bailey, Rangiora, visited Wanganui this week . Mrs. S. L. Collier, Christchurch, is visiting Wanganui. Miss H. Rule is a Wellington visitor to Wanganui. Mrs. J. S. Howie, St. John’s Hill, is visiting her daughter, Mrs. J. S. H. Robertson, Lower Hutt. Mrs. Beechey, Marton, has been spending a few days in Hawera with her mother. Lady Carncro.ss. Miss Gibbons, Wanganui East, is visiting Wellington for the marriage of her niece. Miss Beth Gibbons, which takes place on Saturday. Miss Pam Barton, the well-known British golfer who visited New Zealand a tew years ago, has joined the Air Raid Precautions organisation near her home in We. 1 , London, and drives an ambulance. She is an expert at carrying out running repairs to her vehicle. Miss Kay Stammers, the tennis star, flew to England in the Yankee Clipper from America, where she was playing in tournaments. She is now busy doing her bit. St. Dunstan’s, London, where there are still nearly 2000 war-blinded men from the last war, has an interesting link with the Dominion, for one of the

most devoted voluntary workers al St. Dunstan’s is a New Zealand woman who devotes much of her time to the service of the blind. She is Miss Nesta Morrah, daughter of the late Edward Wakefield Morrah, formerly inspector of the Bank of Australasia, who lived tor many years in Wellington, where Miss Nesta Morrah was born. She went to England for health reasons in 1920 and expected to return in 18 months. But she became so much interested in St. Dunstan's that she has never returned. Between 20 and 30 New Zealanders, who were blinded in the last war, were trained at St. Dunstan’s, which now has the additional responsibility of treating men blinded in the present war. The death of the Reverend Mother M. St. Genevieve (Annie Henley), Assistant General of the Sisters of the Notre Dame des Missions, occurred on August 7 at the Mother-house of the Order, Hastings, England. The Reverend Mother St. Genevieve was born in Christchurch in 1861, and in her seventeenth year entered the Noviate of the Convent, Barbadoes Street. During the 62 years of her religious life she proved herself a zealous and far-seeing educationist. She spent a great many years as superioress of various convents of her Order in N'-’w , Zealand, and was the first in the Do-1 minion to meet the situation caused by the advent of free places in secondary schools for throwing open the doors of the convent secondary schools in like mariner, though this action greatly -increased the heavy financial burden placed on the con- I vent. fl '■ I ' I ■