Memorial to Tanya Burr, killed 15 September 2002

Tragic Connections: Room One 1994

The 1994 'end of year' school play: 'Whakarongo Way'

The following article was published in the Evening Standard on Friday, 16 December 1994 (page 10). Scroll down to read about its significance to three young lives all tragically no longer with us.

Arlene is at the extreme left. Tanya is second from left at the back. Mara is fourth from left in front of Tanya. Rachel is at the back on the right of Tanya. Anita is fourth from right near the back. Michael is immediately to Anita's left and Rachel's right. Michelle is at the extreme right. Brett is in front of Michelle. Now to work on the names of the others....

Tanya's role in the play was as 'Kirsty' the receptionist from the TV programme Shortland Street, a soap opera that Tanya loved to the end. This was, however, the first (and in fact the only) time she ever fully participated in a school public performance. Usually she was far too shy and avoided taking any kind of prominent, let alone public, role

Tragic Connections

There is another aspect of concern regarding this innocent 1994 newspaper article of a bunch of kids preparing for their school play and to leave for secondary school. This is that 3 of the 15 children appearing in it (and of the 27 children in their class photo also above) have since died in separate tragic circumstances. 

The first was Seth Strawbridge (then in Form One and shown in the top photo), who died on 22 December 2000, aged 18, as a result of injuries received when running off the road in his car and hitting a tree on SH 57, north of Levin (Potts Hill area, on a very windy day ?). 

Next was Michael Head, killed aged 20 on 26 January 2002, when his car hit the Milson Line (Railway) Overbridge, Palmerston North, as he tried to outrun a police car. Evidently he and three 'friends' happened across three police cars in Malden Street, whose occupants had been watching an unrelated burglary take place in an industrial property in the street. At the time Michael drove by, the police had just rounded up the burglars and were putting them in their cars. Unfortunately Michael's speed attracted their attention and a very short chase ensued. The intersection of Malden Street and the overbridge are only metres apart. 

Thirdly, of course, was Tanya's death on 15 September 2002.

Tanya had a direct connection with both Seth and Michael. Seth attended the school from the start, plus his father and I both attended the school in our own turn. However, Michael was only there for one year. Tanya gave one of our kittens (Tammy's brother) to Seth a number of years ago, and that was something very special to her. Kieran also frequently talks about 'Tom Kitten', which became Seth's cat.

Michael and Tanya managed to agitate one another in the latter part of 1994, and one day this led to Michael hitting Tanya over the head with a book, causing an approx. 3 cm split in her scalp. Anita thinks the girls had been teasing the boys - again - and that this was behind the incident. 

Unfortunately, Tanya had a pencil in her hand at the time and promptly jammed it into him, breaking the lead and seeing him sent off to hospital to extract the lead. As he had started the 'encounter' (theoretically!), he had to write a letter of apology to her. I remember her being very unappreciative of this letter and promptly screwing it up and throwing it away. 

However, a few days or weeks later the class's annual camp took place and during the course of this they got to know each other a little better and the result was that both apologised to each other with sincerity for what each had done - and that was that.

Tanya was almost certainly unaware that Michael had been killed, but she was upset to learn of Seth's death. However, as Anita had just moved to Rotorua a day or so earlier, Tanya wasn't brave enough to go to his funeral alone - let alone with her mother!!!!!

Since Tanya's death, I have come to know Michael's mum, Jeanette, as a result of a message she left about Michael on the 'Whakarongo School' page on the oldfriends.co.nz website. There is something really comforting about getting to know people who actually have an idea of what one is going through in this sort of tragedy. In our case, we have the added oddness of knowing that as a result of their little skirmish in 1994, each of our children carried the resulting scar (Tanya to the top of her head and Michael to his arm) for the rest of their lives. Now the mothers also share scars of another sort. 

Anyway, here follows Jeanette's comments on the crash that killed Michael, as naturally at first glance the story of an apparent police chase can look a bit suspect. The reality, however, was not so straightforward:

"Michael's actions were out of character and it is believed he panicked. He was showing the boys in his car it's power. Malden Street is across the road from where he was flatting and is wide, safe, quiet and industrial with no housing. He intended to go to the end, turn around and come back. He told a flatmate he'd be 3 minutes, but the police were there and he knew he'd be in trouble. Michael would have been so ashamed of his actions, he had been drinking and broke his own rule of not even getting into his car after only one can. Was he pressured to take those 3 guys he hardly knew in his car? Michael had a loving, generous nature and worked hard as a baker at Quality Bakers. Family was the most important thing in his life, he was a young man who was liked by everyone of all ages."

Like us with Phoebe and Puffball, Jeanette also inherited Michael's cat. So all three 1994 Whakarongo School pupils who died so tragically over such a short period, were clearly cat-lovers.

The night Michael was killed was the night of my brother Russell's engagement party to Jenna, and so we (minus Tanya who was in Rotorua) had been nearby celebrating. My brother Paul and family came across the accident scene when driving home from the party and had to take a detour. There is a certain irony that Michael was killed just after Russell and Jenna's engagement party and then a few months later Tanya was killed just after their wedding.

Kieran started at Whakarongo School in late 1995, about ten months after Tanya finished there. By this time, Tanya was already well into her second high school (after attending only one primary school since she first started school aged five), and things for her were a shambles. When these photos were taken, no-one could have predicted the disaster the first half of her third form year would be. 

From a class of 13 at the top end of her school (and around 80 in the whole school at that time) in 1994, she was headed for complete culture shock effectively all alone (she considered) in a school with about 1,200 - including about 350 third formers. By the second day there she had her first cigarette - because she didn't want to tell the only kids who accepted her that she didn't smoke. Then she discovered 'label clothing'. 

None of these things had mattered in a quiet country primary school. Unfortunately they did matter in a comparatively huge city high school and she felt like the odd one out - the 'country hick' perhaps. It was not until she left school that she really appreciated what impact her constant playing up and generally drawing attention to herself in a negative way actually had. The other kids from city primary schools played up, but they knew when to duck for cover. The very naive Tanya didn't have a clue - and tended to get caught. 

The first high school (Freyberg) must also take a very large share of the blame. They refused to believe that Tanya had not also been a holy terror at Whakarongo School - and also refused to simply phone the school and ask. They merely said to me that they had so many children that they didn't have the time to waste on one that was playing up. They just wanted to get rid of her.

She started there in February 1995 and I removed her in about June-July 1995, before the school could actually kick her out - which they were intending to do. At the time the principal (who now has a senior role in PPTA Principal's Council, and who seems to have more interest in not alienating children, specifically budding killer kids, from the school system nowadays than he did in 1995 [ref: Dominion-Post, 18/9/2002, p. A7] ) remarked: "Did she really not play up like that at Whakarongo School?" My restrained, but rather angry answer was: "No she didn't!" 

Over subsequent months a number of other 'surplus to requirements' children also seemed to be filtered out of the school. Presumably this was easier than to worry about these children's future well-beings. I was completing my BA that year and that school - my old school - deserves no credit whatsoever for my achievement.

However, the 'real Tanya' from Whakarongo School - the normally quiet and usually shy one, who liked to keep very much to herself when it suited her - was still there under the chaos. And that was the one her true friends knew and loved - and now deeply grieve. She had long since left the 'other slightly too wild one' behind at high school, and now she liked to be in control of her own life. 

Her car gave her that freedom and she was happy enough living and planning for the future in her own world along with her cats. She refused to clean up after flatmates - ever, in any flat - and she seemed to be happier not having to worry about flatmates at all if she had a choice. She was also in the early stages of studying real estate sales by correspondence at the Open Polytechnic at the time of her death. Her first assignment, which I found in her things, got very good marks. She was in the process of picking up where she messed up in 1995, and who knows how things might have ended up had she had the chance. After all, I had never thought of tertiary education at her age.

Seth, pictured in the top newspaper photo, was in Form One in 1994 and he became Kieran's school 'buddy' in late 1995 when Kieran started. Others from the senior school often asked after Tanya and that made him feel quite special. 

Tanya's 1994 individual school photo