Through the years, the Old Hilarians' Association innovatively comes up with ways in which former students of Bishop Anstey High School who may have achieved or served are remembered.
Some years ago the association produced a hung calendar where an achiever was remembered each month of the year. Then about five years ago, the Association started honouring Old Hilarians who had continued to assist the school in one way or another, at the annual luncheon held on the first Saturday in July of each year. Whenever we think that the group whose annual Carnival all-inclusive fete has become a sell-out event , and whose annual Independence Day Brunch is the ideal place to sit and chat with your peers of years ago, might be running out of ideas, the group comes up with something new.
This year, Shirley Turpin, President of the Association, and the current Executive, have produced a stand-up Calendar 2001 to acknowledge, in the main, those who served and nurtured the Old Hilarians' Association from its inception and struggled to keep it alive. Although the current executive will demit office in any upcoming year, they are hoping that the Calendar will be an ongoing publication which will help to familiarise the Hilarian community with not just names but the people who devoted time and energy over the crucial years by following the example as set out in the Founder, Bishop Arthur Henry Anstey's Prayer. The calendar, which is available from Shirley and her executive at a small cost, is ideal as a Christmas gift or keepsake of this all girls secondary school which is steeped in tradition dating back to its inception in 1921 with the uniform of navy skirt, white blouse and red and black tie, the school hymn "He who would true valour see" and the school song "Non Nobis Domine" - all of which have never been changed and remain the same to this day for my beloved granddaughter, Lindsay Marie, who has entered the school fifty years after I did.
Grace Siung (de Montrichard), who entered the school in 1924, three years after its doors were swung open, holds the place of pride in the first month of the year. A founder-member of the Association, she now resides in Florida.
Julia Rose started at BAHS in 1933. She has served as Treasurer of the Education Committee and the School Feeding Programme and with her sister Winnifred continues to support the organisation, never missing a school function or Old Hilarian event.
A lady who is not an Old Hilarian but is deeply loved and respected in the school, Stephanie Shurland, principal 1964 - 1981, the only Honorary Hilarian, has been rightfully included as the representative for March 2001.
The other women and their year of entry into the school, Wilsa Hezekiah (1944), Phyllis Weekes (1943), Margot Butcher (1945), Shirley Turpin (1948), Alyson Johnson (1945), Joyce Ali (1948), Inga Wells-Bain (1944), and immediate past principal Valerie Taylor, herself an Hilarian, are featured in Calendar 2001.