School needs help with tribute

Brian Murphy with photos of old boys killed in combat. Photo / Martin Sykes

An Auckland secondary school is searching for cash to help it maintain an annual tribute to former students who gave their lives in battle.

At least 200 of Mt Albert Grammar's young men were killed during World War II, and three others died in Malaya, Vietnam and Timor.

Their pictures, gifted by their families, now take pride of place in the school's F.W. Gamble assembly hall, in a cabinet carved with the words "Lest We Forget".

Every year since the end of World War II these pictures have been hung in the hall for an exhibition and an Anzac Day service held exclusively for the school's Year 9 and Year 13 students.

"It's for the students in their first and last years of school," said school archivist Brian Murphy, who has just celebrated 50 years' service to MAGS.

"There is a lot of respect here for what these men have done."

But many of the pictures - taken nearly 70 years ago - are deteriorating, and the school faces a bill of thousands of dollars to restore them.

Mr Murphy said the school's Albertians Association had raised about $2000, but the re-imaged pictures were not of archival quality. He is appealing to a "kind benefactor" for financial assistance.

It may cost up to $90 to restore each photograph.

"It's a fair amount of money, particularly for a school."

Mr Murphy said the school had further plans to put all of the images on a website and eventually into a memorial book, with an illuminated page for each of the war dead.