For the Community Office, one of the great things about putting a school reunion together is having regular contact with, and getting to know, old boys who are part of a reunion cohort. Those who volunteer to help us coordinate a reunion are absolutely vital to the success of these events. One such old boy who has been doing a stellar job in the reunion committee space this year is 1977's Head Prefect Tim Draper.

The first problem the Community Office is always faced when looking at putting a school reunion is data, or lack thereof. Regular readers of our OB newsletter will know that the Old Boys' Association has recently invested in a impressive new database and that this new platform has given us more superior functionality than has previously been available to us. But one thing our new database simply cannot do, is fill contact information gaps in our data!  

When putting a reunion together it is not uncommon for a year group of 150 old boys, to start with only 25 email addresses (and even some of those might be invalid). This is why it is so important to have a small group of old boys from each reunion group that is willing to help us track their contemporaries down as well as help us to make decisions about when and how the reunion will happen. 

Tim Draper along with Glen O'Brien and Chris Buckley, are our current 50 years reunion committee and boy have they been busy! The 1973-1977 reunion is happening 13th - 15th October and already boasts an impression expressions of interest list, with registration having just opened up in the last week. 

Tim's enthusiasm for the task and for College is clearly evident and we think he is a fantastic example of how volunteers help to support the Old Boys' Association, and the Community Office, to achieve our goals of keeping the OB community connected.    

Over to you Tim.... 

Kathryn asked me if I’d be this month’s profilee. I thought it is the least I could do given what St Bede’s, both staff and fellow students, gifted me 50 years ago.

I, oddly, loved boarding school. Effectively leaving home when I was 12 years old. Reading Fr Merv Duffy’s recent profile, I totally agree regarding the benefits gained when involving oneself with anything and everything. I learnt this at St Bede’s and it flowed on to life beyond.

There is no doubt that the dedication of the many priests at St Bede’s inspired me to enter the seminary a year later. For me I guess it was the old cliché about wanting to make a difference in this world. The 20 years that followed in the Marist Order were extremely enjoyable, equipping me with an amazingly broad education, and ironically, a skill base for any eventuality.

As was typical at that time, teaching was my allocated ministry. However I was fortunate to train as a Guidance Counsellor while teaching and counselling at Pompallier College in Whangarei. This later led to an eight year outreach ministry in West Auckland with two other priests, Chanel Houlahan and Chris Skinner (and Peter Healy for a time). Working alongside talented individuals like Chanel and Chris was extraordinarily fulfilling, especially during our challenging young offender programmes based at Papakai Marae near Turangi. However the pending likelihood of moving back to traditional ministry, plus my personal struggle with celibacy, triggered my departure from the Marists in 1998 following an eight month sabbatical overseas. I so admire my colleagues who continue in their priesthood in the face of ever-growing challenges within the institutional Church.

Graeme Dingle and his partner Jo-Anne Wilkinson then invited me to establish the first license of Project K. This was on Auckland’s North Shore. This later led to facilitating the West, the Central and the South Auckland start-ups.

I was lucky enough to connect with, and later marry, my lovely Leigh and take on a parenting role for Leigh’s beautiful daughter Whitney. We bought a house together and, once Whitney had left school, we all moved with Benson our dog to Brisbane.

There I worked alongside Brisbane Principal Jack Ryan to establish Project K’s sister programme Stars in his school where it is now fully ensconced 12 years on.

I later moved into paid management roles in Brisbane, first with Drug Arm Australasia and then with Multicultural Australia – a 300 staff, non-profit organization settling the 3,000 refugees/asylum seekers per annum into Queensland. They were amazing roles for a Kiwi.

I’ll never forget visiting a newly arrived Syrian family at their allocated home. They welcomed me with a cup of tea. There were chairs and tables in the kitchen where we sat, but upon interrogation, I discovered they had no other furniture or bedding in the house. The next day I managed to source an entire house of chattels that an estate wanted to donate to a “good cause”. It took two of us about three hours to load the truck and huge hire trailer. Just before arriving at the refugee family’s new home, I telephoned ahead to say we had one or two items. When I turned the corner there suddenly appeared an entire neighbourhood and the gear was unloaded and in the house in what seemed like 30 seconds. And the look on the faces of the family members will remain with me forever.

As with many of our engagements (partly by design, partly fate and/or circumstance) Leigh and I, and our new dog Baldrick, now enjoy semi-retirement on Waiheke Island driving tour buses during summers (all care and no responsibility) and slowly circumnavigating Australia via caravan in the winters.

I so look forward after 50 years to connecting with fellow classmates of ’73. See you in October!