The Morawa Junior High School (M.J.H.S.) class of 1967—Class 2R

I am reasonably sure the following is the school picture of class 2R taken in 1967.

It could be class 3R, in which case it would have been taken in 1968. But, looking at the faces they seem a bit young to be the 3rd Year High class in the year of taking the Junior Exam.

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The form teacher was Roy Ryan, hence the “R” in 2R.

I didn’t realise it at the time, but there were a lot more girls in 2R than there were boys. There are fourteen girls and nine boys. Interesting that I only realise this now, some 54 years later.

This is kind of interesting because 2R was the ‘upper’ class. The class of the smarter year 9 (2nd year high) students. Pretty much those students assessed as likely to make it to 3rd Year High and take the Junior Exam.

So! More girls than boys in 2R. How about that.

Let me see how many of these people I can remember.

Starting with the boys and going left to right and I am not guaranteeing the spelling of these names:

1. Len Schmidt

2. Me

3. Stephen Hill

4. Malcolm Kapor

5. Steven Jiesman

6. Robert (Rob) Bryan

7. Russell Ormisher

8. Charlie Ferguson

9. Kevin Franklin

I don’t remember many of the girls. How sad is that? But I will put in the ones that I think I have right:

1. dunno

2. Julie Duthie

3. dunno

4. Robyn O’Dea (might be wrong)

5. Joy Tubby

6. dunno

7. Stephanie Broad (behind Form teacher)

8. Beverly Vickers (behind Form teacher)

9. Joy Carslake

10. dunno

11. Helen Thomas

12. Rae Gordon

13. Janine Olden

14. Heather Keown

I apologise to any of the above that I got wrong. Feel free to leave me a comment to make any necessary corrections.

Roy Ryan

As Mr. Ryan would probably have been in his mid-40s, if not his early 50s at the time, it is most likely he has left this world by now and returned to stardust—unless he has made it into the 100s.

I did a Google and DuckDuckGo search on the Web for [“Roy Ryan” +teacher Morawa] but did not find anything in the first ten pages of results from either search engine. At least, nothing that appeared relevant to the Roy Ryan I knew at Morawa.

Considering the number of students he educated, and did so very well, it is somewhat of shame that someone like Mr. Ryan did not make it onto the Web anywhere. So here now are some things I would like to say about Mr. Ryan.

Roy Ryan was a science and maths teacher. In my opinion, a very good one. He made learning maths and science interesting and fun. I think that maths and science students at Morawa Junior High School from around 1965 to 1972 were very lucky to have had Mr. Ryan teaching them.

Mr. Ryan had a particularly different approach to punishing bad behaviour from boys. He would give them a swift kick in the butt and I can attest to the fact that it was quite painful, having received this punishment on one occasion. However, to this day, I don’t think I deserved it. But, in those days, there was no ‘court of appeal’. I doubt that Mr. Ryan would be allowed by the school to administer this style of punishment in these days.

But, for what it is worth now, I want to thank Mr. Ryan for teaching me maths (especially algebra, which I loved), chemistry, and science. He made chemistry so interesting that I begged my parents to buy me a large chemistry kit and I would spend hours at home doing experiments.