01 May 2014
HHHS was honoured to have Mr Terry Dowling and Mr Tony Bonvino speak at our ANZAC Day Ceremony today. Terry and Tony are ex students of HHHS and both served in the Vietnam War. Terry and Tony have been among the first service men added to an honour board, which acknowledges all service men and women who attended HHHS.
We are keen to make contact with all ex HHHS students who have served in the armed forces in any war. The Daily Telegraph featured this project, along with a story about Tony. Please click the following links to read the articles: http://bit.ly/HHHS_Honourboard http://bit.ly/HHHS_ANZACA
Thank you also to Mr Dan Dominguez, who is championing this project and organised today's ceremony. His ANZAC day speech can be viewed below.
Good morning students and staff
I just wanted to give a brief introduction to our guest, Mr Bonvino, and a bit of background to a project we have been working on at the school that Mr Bonvino is connected with.
Many of us here today, find it difficult to connect with the ideas of Anzac Day. We have grown up in peaceful times; we have everything we could ever want for. The idea of war seems unbelievable. While some of us may have grandfathers and /or great-grandfathers who served, there is often a bit of distance between the generations that makes it difficult to relate to. Many of our enemies in the past are now friends, things have changed.
But the principles of sacrifice, courage and generosity we celebrate on Anzac Day haven't changed.
Therefore, we wanted to do something to help us reconnect to the spirit of Anzac.
To do this, we decided to put our feelers out and see if there were any students who went to this school who served in a war. We decided that if we found any names we could put up an honour board, to recognise their service.
This school started in 1958, so anyone from the first or second war, or Korea would have been too old. What students from 1958 onwards were eligible for; however, was Vietnam. Most of you will remember we had a couple of Veterans from the Vietnam War visit the school last year. It's an interesting and in many ways tragic story with Vietnam. The Vietnam War (now about to celebrate its 50 years), was a war that many Australians didn't want to know about. Without getting into the history, many if not most of these soldiers were forgotten and treated shamefully when they returned home. There was no hero's welcome. There are no honour boards with Vietnam Vets names up on council memorials or park monuments- even today. And yet, these guys had to go, in many cases they were forced to go, with their names being pulled out of a hat. Our friend Mr Bonvino being one of them.
We wanted to reconnect to the Anzac story. We also wanted to honour these heroes.
So far we have 13 names; 13 guys who sat in these class rooms, who caught your buses, who looked out over this river and who served in Vietnam. And this is only the start; we think there may be as many as 20. Then there are the conflicts that followed: the Malayan Confrontation, Irian Jaya, the Gulf War, Somalia, Bougainville, East Timor, Afghanistan, Iraq…
This project is ongoing. It is our hope, that when we have our list of names we can hold a separate ceremony, where we bring these people back to school they remembered so fondly.