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School celebrates golden anniversary

It may be among the smallest of New Westminster's schools, but F.W. Howay Elementary School holds a multitude of memories for those involved with the school.

It may be among the smallest of New Westminster's schools, but F.W. Howay Elementary School holds a multitude of memories for those involved with the school.

Planning has been underway for a 50th anniversary celebration that's taking place on Saturday, Oct. 1 from 7 to 10 p.m. at the school. The organizing committee is inviting all alumni, spouses, parents, former teachers and staff to attend.

"It's a chance to reconnect with some faces you might not have seen for some time," said Lisa Graham, a former student who is on an organizing committee. "It's a meet and greet social."

Rory Munro, a leader on the organizing committee, said the event will be a time to reminisce with old friends and share stories about their time at the school. Munro can't forget the day that an oil truck lost its brakes on Rickman Street and rolled down the street and lodged itself on the school fence, or the day students were able to pummel the principal with snowballs.

"The Columbian came up - Basil (King)," he said about the newspaper's photographer. "They needed a picture. It was our opportunity to go out and bean the principal."

The highlight of Munro's time at F.W. Howay was when the small school captured the title at the city's track meet.

"We won the aggregate over all the big schools. We won two years in a row," he said. "We won the whole shebang."

Graham, who is now a school trustee in New Westminster, recalls having to attend Armstrong Elementary School in Burnaby after the school was damaged by fire in the fire of 1973. She remembers the day the school reopened in January 1974 and recalls how a boy in a grade below her kept running back and forth.

"I said, what are you doing?" she recalled. "He said, 'I am training for the NHL.'"

That student - Brent Hughes - did in fact go on to play in the NHL, after playing with the New Westminster Bruins.

Dr. Scott Neilson, who won a gold medal in athletics in the 1979 Pan American Games and was part of the Canadian Olympic team that boycotted the 1980 Olympics, is another former alumni, as is internationally known harpist Lori Pappajohn.

People are encouraged to bring photos and memorabilia. A slide presentation will share images from the schools five decades in New Westminster.

"We are going to put up craft paper on the walls and felt pens," Munro said. "People can put up memories - we are doing it by decades."

The school's current parent advisory council will be holding a silent auction, with the proceeds being used to enhance the school in the Massey/Victory Heights neighbourhood.

While it will be a chance for some to reconnect with old friends and check out their old stomping grounds, for others it's like they never really left.

Several former F.W. Howay students have come back to their elementary school in a different role - teacher. Other former students have since become parents of students at the school.

"I remember when it burned down. We had to go up to Armstrong (in Burnaby) when they rebuilt it," said Paul Johansen, a former student and a parent of current Howay students. "I spent the first half of Grade 7 there. We got back in for the last half of the year."

Anyone who's been affiliated with the school is invited to attend this weekend's reunion at the school, located at 91 Courtney Cres. www.twitter.com/TheresaMcManus

tmcmanus@royalcityrecord.com