Former staff, students and P&C office holders from all over NSW will gather at E A Southee school at the beginning of November to celebrate the school's 50th anniversary.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
or signup to continue reading
E A Southee was opened in 1969 with 320 students to cope with a "baby boom" of young people coming through Cootamundra Public School.
Former principal Barry Cant said in the 1960s Cootamundra Public had more than 800 students, so the education department decided to build a second public primary school.
"It opened in 1969 with 320 students and only went from kindergarten to Year 3 and it was a few years before it went all the way up to Year 6," Mr Cant said.
A committee of ten comprising former and current staff and parents has been busy since March organising the 50th anniversary celebrations, which will include a school assembly on Friday November 1, a dinner at the Ex-Servicemen's Club on Saturday November 2 and a tour of the school on Sunday 3.
Well-known former editor of the Cootamundra Herald, the late Barry Clarke, was the school's first P&C president.
Mr Clarke was influential in having the school named after E A Southee, who was born in 1890, educated at Cootamundra Public and Sydney High Schools and studied agriculture at Sydney University before being selected as a Rhodes Scholar in 1913. Sothee rose to the rank of major during World War 1 and after graduating from Oxford studied at Cornell before returning to Australia to become principal of Hawkesbury Agricultural College in 1921, where he remained until his retirement in 1954 - a distinguished son of Cootamundra.
The school had its highest enrolment of 384 students in 1982, but is now only 100. Building extensions were opened by Education minister Eric Bedford in 1979.
Barry Clarke's granddaughter is a P&C member and his great granddaughter a student.
The first school captains were Carol Vesperman and Michael Johnson.
Mr Johnson, his wife Gai and their two daughters live in Cootamundra.
