Norris Mary Benning 1920 -

Mrs Benning was born on November 5, 1920 at Featherston in the Waiarapa. Her mother was born in Masterton and her father was born in Christchurch. She had one brother.

Mrs Benning came to Levin from a small settlement 13 miles from Featherston in April 1929. Having come from a tiny two teacher school, arriving at Levin District High School (now known as Levin School) was a major shock. The District High was believed at the time to be the biggest high school in the country.

Mrs Benning took English and maths and as a girl was required to take history and home science. The boys took geography and chemistry. Before World War Two, boys had to take military training one afternoon a week. If their parents had any rooted objection to this the boys were permitted to do something else instead.

Pastimes included basketball (now called netball) – a nine aside game on Courts at the Levin domain- and tennis and going to the beach. Mrs Bennings two favourite pastimes were going to the baths and the movies. She remembers clearly climbing into the corrugated iron changing sheds with her friends and sunbathing after her swim.

She and her brother would go to the Saturday matinees at the movies every week... ‘the heroine would be tied to the railway lines with the train about five feet away and then it would stop and say: ‘See you same place, same time, next week’.

To get into the movies it used to cost sixpence for the day time. At night it cost the equivalent of fifteen cents in today currency. The movie theatre was situated where the Regent Court now stands. Downstairs was the movie theatre and upstairs was a ballroom. In the winter the ballroom was used for skating. ‘A group of people used to come here and we would have skating, but it didn’t do a lot of good for the floor, so I don’t think they pressed the idea.

When radio first came to Levin, Mrs Benning and her brother would rush home to listen to it…‘It was a big entertainment. We used to hurry home from school to listen to the radio. We used to be able to get short-wave and listen to the Paris Mondial in the afternoon after school’.

At the time Mrs Benning was growing up in Levin she says the town extended from Durham Street to Queen Street and outside of that there wasn’t much at all. There was a settlement at Weraroa with a few shops and that was about it. Some things have changed quite a lot since her childhood. When she was little it was quite safe to go anywhere at night by yourself. Leaving your house open was not a problem. There was no fear of being mugged or robbed. Mrs Benning sees these things have changed for the worse.

Teenagers in Mrs Bennings day to her weren’t as ready to express themselves. They didn’t know anything about drugs or crime, but other than that they were similar in many ways. Her thoughts on teenagers today are that they are better educated, more articulate and noisier!

Mrs Benning left school at the age of seventeen and decided to follow some of her friends into Wellington Teacher Training College… ‘Two friends I went through high school with were going into teaching, so I more or less went with them.’ Her parents were very supportive even though teaching was a lowly paid Job.

At the time Mrs Benning left Training College a lot of her friends were serving in World War Two. Not really having anywhere to settle down she got in to relief teaching in different places throughout New Zealand. Some of the more remote places she taught in were Eketahuna and Cross Creek. The first day she arrived at Cross Creek she remembers..

‘I had to cross a little swing bridge. Unfortunately it had no sides on it. There was nothing to grip on to and the day I got there it was pouring with rain and there was a howling wind coming down the valley. When I went to cross the creek I nearly went into the water. It was about a six foot drop to the creek, so I was lucky I made it over that day’.

One of the reasons Mrs Benning stayed in the teaching profession for eight years was that she loved working with the children. She thinks that when she was teaching it would have been easier than it would be now. Reasons being that there was a greater give and take between the teachers and the students. Mrs Benning also believes that now the students are always watching the teacher, waiting for them to make a mistake so they can make them feel uncomfortable.

Discipline when she was teaching wasn’t required as much as it is today. Where we have ‘detentions’ and ‘wombles,’ students when Mrs Benning was teaching were sent straight to the Principal. Teachers were not allowed to use the strap unless they had the permission of the Principal.

After teaching in Eketahuna and Cross Creek, Mrs Benning moved back to Levin and taught in the Ohau School until she married Harding Benning.

Her husband and his brother Bill, after having the general store at Waitarere, started up ‘Bennings Footwear’ in Oxford Street. Mrs Benning helped out occasionally.