Professor Stephen Vasciannie
AU REVOIR, MRS. REID
The Kingston College family regrets the passing of Mrs. Beulah Reid, English Language and Literature teacher, guide, friend and leader. Mrs. Reid taught at Kingston College for more than 20 years, up to the decade of the 1980s, and in that capacity, served to shape the characters and destinies of countless students who passed through the portals at Melbourne Park and Clovelly.
Many Old Boys will recall Mrs. Reid's careful and thorough teaching style, which combined gentle persuasion with authoritative pronouncements on important points. As a teacher of English Literature, Mrs. Reid was especially adept with the classics, taking students with clarity and precision through the likes of Shakespeare's Henry V, Chaucer's Prologue to the Canterbury Tales and Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. And, at the Advanced Level, Mrs. Reid's specialist skills of literary criticism were most appreciated: with pride and no prejudice, it is a truth universally acknowledged that Mrs. Reid was one of the best teachers that Kingston College has known.
Mrs. Reid was the Head of the English Department of Kingston College in the 1970s, well-known to have been a time of ferment, excitement and challenges to traditional ways of seeing. The English Department, under Mrs. Reid guidance, served as the foundation for the teaching of the humanities at the School, and used the classics as the basis for opening up new worlds to the students. It was a formidable, world class, English Department, with every member committed to our social and intellectual advancement, working as part of a strong Kingston College community.
Mrs. Reid and her colleagues were not afraid to pull us back in line when we strayed, in the manner of teenagers, and they emphasized for us the importance of the word. Many Old Boys also remember Mrs. Reid's willingness to go the extra mile to ensure the academic success of her students. No industrial action, no extracurricular excesses, no bureaucracy, would stand in the way of her determination to ensure that her students were properly prepared for the threatening "Mr. Cambridge" and other assessors.
We will miss Mrs. Reid. We say au revoir, for we shall meet again; and we offer heartfelt condolences to members of the Reid family, including Hugh and Danny, themselves distinguished Old Boys of the College.
Chairman of the Board