We as Eveline School Alumni mourn the passing of our dear Miss Battiss.
Gillian Winward Battiss taught history and Latin at Eveline School in Bulawayo for 40 years. She was indeed a legend to hundreds of girls who passed through her care.
A diminutive and lively person until the end, with a brilliant mind, she led an active and valuable life. When the horrendous period of inflation hit Zimbabwe in the early 2000's, Eveline girls worldwide joined forces to help her out while she was living in her home in Fairbridge Way.
A target for thieves, a group of us went to visit her to discuss increasing her security and to lend a hand in tidying her home, we found her playing the stockmarket !
Eveline had many excellent teachers, how well I remember Paddy Vickery who was an enormous influence in my life. We all learned music (and discipline) under the watchful eye of Mrs Dawes, and all eyes on Miss Bennet, our French teacher, whom we inspected from top to toe as she was always magnificently attired.
Another stickler for discipline was Miss Celia Horn, I had great admiration for this forbidding lady who engendered a great a love for history in all her students. Miss Dreyer and Miss Wing were our physical education teachers, and of course the inimitable Miss Powell!
Those words read out to us at each and every final assembly, stay with us to this day.
'I shall pass through this world but once, any good therefore that I can do or any kindness that I can show to any human being, let me do it now. Let me knot defer or neglect it for I shall not pass this way again'
Jenny Green Welch recently posted on FB, the hymn 'God be with you till we meet again' - the hymn that we all loved so much and was so poignant to us all, singing it with gusto (and tears) at each end of term.