Diana Beaglehole

When I was 10 years of age, I was taught by a gorgeous 19 year old named Diana Flower. Diana was in her first year of teaching and we all loved her. Here we are, Standard 4, of Wanganui East primary school, 1958. I'm in the second top row on the left. I think it is pretty clear who Diana is.

Diana later married Robin Beaglehole who died in the early 90's. In one of those typically New Zealand connectivities, Robin was son of New Zealand's legendary historian, J.C. Beaglehole, an older brother of Tim, lately Chancellor of Victoria University of Wellington, and cousin to David Beaglehole, physics professor and founder of Beaglehole Instruments. Diana's dad was a primary school principal, of Durie Hill School in Wanganui, and was later owner of Flower's Bookshop.

Diana is also an historian, an author of several books, and most recently, official historian for the on-line Encyclopedia of New Zealand, on the subject of Wanganui.
http://www.teara.govt.nz/en/whanganui-region
She was also the historian commissioned by the Wanganui District Council to provide a report on the issue of the name of the city, and the vexed issue of how that name is spelt. A pdf of her report can be found at
http://www.wanganui.govt.nz/

You can imagine what it is like when I now get together with my old primary school teacher from 52 years ago. Diana knows more than almost anyone about Wanganui, one of my favourite subjects, and remembers names and characters with almost the terrifying recall of Richard Green. I say "almost" because Richard is pathological. Poor Miang had to sit through an afternoon of Diana and me reminiscing, before taking this picture of the two of us. As you can see, Diana is still gorgeous.

Footnote: In the centre of the bottom row of the school picture is a girl with pigtails. Her name is Dallas Caldwell, and she was the first girl I fell for, at age 12. It was simple really. We had an "end of primary school" dance and I was wearing a square-bottomed lurex thread tie with a black stripe down one side, very fashionable in 1960. As she danced with me, Dallas took the lurex in her hands and said, "what a nice tie". That was it. I was a goner. After the dance Dallas went off to an all girls school and I went off to my all boys school and I barely saw her again. We finally met up at a primary school reunion about 6 years ago. Dallas no longer had pigtails and I no longer had the lurex tie. I recalled the story, we both laughed, and then we turned our attention back to Richard Green, who was revealing far more embarrassing tales about everyone present.