Inspiring teachers of tomorrow
Gaelic Craic, a talk-fest he would have instigated and loved.
Four current male school principals, one former such principal and one lady principal, Yvonne Browning of SGHS, spoke of Wes and his ways. As did each of his four children – Hannah, Ben, Jacob and Greta, Brigid More who had taught with Wes for 25 years at Verdon, fellow teacher Sabin Perkins of Kaka Point, a Melvin student before he became a teacher, Patrick Canny who’d followed the same career path.
It was said that many of Melvin’s pupils became teachers, sensing the joy and satisfaction the job brought him.
He had grown up in the western Southland township of Nightcaps, where his parents Jack and Rona Jean owned and operated Melvins’ Hardware store, going to school at St Patrick’s there and later on to secondary school at St Kevin’s College, Oamaru, before gaining an MA, majoring in history, at Canterbury University where he also studied teaching practice and education.
His first teaching post brought him home to Southland to James Hargest High School.
And there on his first day in February 1979 he met fellow firstday teacher, Australian Noreen.
They married after school broke up in early December, surprising few of their pupils according to several letters of condolence received by Mrs Melvin, who said contact from long-ago students and the memories their letters evoked was very special.
Their teaching careers continued through the raising of their family and the development of a deer, sheep, beef, dairy and chook farm on 30 acres at Makarewa. Wes taught for close on 30 years at Verdon College, while coaching school and Marist club cricket. He played for Marist and had been both club captain and club president.
When he retired from Verdon and fulltime teaching finished, he formed a family and friends company of 10 to buy and refurbish student flats in Dunedin initially to accommodate their own children studying at Otago University and Polytechnic.
He’d always loved young people, was himself young at heart, and kept in touch with them over the years.
He was a marker and moderator for NCEA for many years, a history curriculum tutor, teaching leader of six history tours to Vietnam.
He did relief teaching at James Hargest, Verdon and Southland Girls’ High where his wife Noreen is deputy principal and he proved a popular lecturer at the southern University of the Third Age (U3A) groups.
His passing leaves Noreen living at Flora Rd, teaching at Southland Girls’ with his younger sister Janelle Stevenson.
His first born, Hannah, is a lawyer in Invercargill where she lives with her husband George Cuthill and the Melvin grandchildren Eamon and Caoimhe; older son Ben is an engineer in Christchurch.
The two younger members of the family, Jacob and Greta, are students in Dunedin.
Wes Melvin was a Southlander who passed his interest in history on to hundreds over the years.
He became a legendary teacher, now part of the history he loved.