Regulus Issue 1, 2020

Page 32

Honouring the

Founder

The St Andrew’s College community was unable to gather for the Founders’ Day Assembly because of the COVID-19 pandemic, with many also missing the opportunity to see the wonderful display in The Green Library and Innovation Centre honouring the founder of the College, Rev. A T Thompson. The display was put together by Preparatory School Art teacher and Museum Curator, Pip Dinsenbacher, and Head Graphic Designer, Craig Morgan, and featured a 1920 AJS combination motorcycle, similar to the one Rev. Thompson famously rode around the College grounds during its establishment at Strowan in 1917. Pip has also been working on a special exhibition in the College Museum about Rev. Thompson, which will be completed once the College reopens. As a passionate historian, who has written about Rev. Thompson many times before, Pip remains just as enamoured with the man he was. “He had a hard life, a tragic life, yet it was also an incredible life, and we really wanted to take this opportunity to celebrate that.” Alexander Thomas Thompson was born in Invercargill in 1876, and although he missed some of his schooling at Invercargill Grammar School, he still managed to become Dux and win a scholarship to secondary school. However, at the age of 12, and without consultation with his parents, young Alexander left school to become an apprentice draper. He worked for the next four years, attended night school, and became a lay preacher in his mid-teens, before deciding he wanted to forge a career as a minister. After attending Otago Boys’ High School for his matriculation year, Alexander won a generous scholarship from the Presbyterian Church to complete his Bachelor of Arts degree at Otago University, then won a scholarship to complete a Bachelor of Divinity degree at Yale in the United States, becoming the first New Zealander to attend this prestigious ‘Ivy League’ University.

After completing his studies at Yale, Alexander was determined to circle the globe before returning to New Zealand, and with little money, paid $10.00 to work as a cattleman, living below decks on a first-class liner, sailing to Britain. When several of the rich passengers on board heard there was a Yale graduate working as a cattleman, they insisted on meeting him, and upon learning that Thompson’s luggage had been stolen below decks, they gave him £12.00 to kit himself out. Once he returned home to his fiancée, Mary Kemp, they married, and had their first child, a daughter, at Thames, where Alexander, now Rev. Thompson, had his first parish. They moved to a new parish in Masterton in 1906, where tragedy struck when Mary died in childbirth. Mary’s mother and sister then cared for and brought up Rev. Thompson’s toddler daughter and day-old son away. He threw himself into his church work to try and cope with his grief. Some years later Rev. Thompson

married a Masterton woman, Robina Cameron, and they had four children, one boy and three girls. Around this time, an attempt to start a boys’ school in Masterton was thwarted. He was then instrumental in the establishment of girls’ boarding school, Solway College. Thompson’s sister-inlaw, Marion, was its first principal. By this time, aged around 40, Rev. Thompson had grown a huge reputation, and was called to the St Andrew’s Presbyterian parish in Addington, finding the social stratums and expectations of Christchurch quite different to sleepy Masterton, says Pip. “As well as being a good preacher, he was expected to give weekly lectures on subjects such as Geology and Astronomy, and make personal calls to the parishioners’ homes. He provided incredible pastoral care throughout World War I and later, the Spanish flu outbreak.”


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