Meet Dulcie Floweday née Roberts, Class of 1936

This holiday I visited a Collegiate Old Girl, Dulcie Floweday née Roberts. She lives in a Retirement village home in Sandton and she matriculated in 1936, 86 years ago. She is 103 years old and it was wonderful chatting to her and hearing about her days at Collegiate and her life.

Dulcie loved school – more sport than academics, and was a house captain. After school she remained in touch with her teachers and with Miss Tilley, the then headmistress. She was married to an English teacher who then went into the Methodist ministry. Dulcie was able to utilise to the full in the Church her experience and training gained at Collegiate in leadership, public speaking and music.

Widowed at 65, Dulcie picked up the pieces of her life, and, for the first time since her marriage, went out into the workplace. For twenty years, she worked for various companies, including an estate agency where she qualified as a conveyancer, and as a secretary at Mike’s Kitchen head office, and an investment company, only finally retiring from the latter at the age of 86. At this point, she turned her lifelong hobby of dressmaking into a small business, named Fleur. She would travel around to retirement homes, with sample fabrics and create made-to-measure, comfortable, stretch fabric dresses specifically designed for older ladies.

Through all the years, Dulcie kept in touch with her Collegiate school friends, especially Daphne Dovey (née Hunt). As married couples they frequently met up, and Ted and John Dovey always teased their wives about singing the school song, mocking them by singing, “Girls of the College, chock full of knowledge, girls of the games club, who stand on their heads…” Daphne and Dulcie were in regular phone contact right up to Daphne’s death at the age of 98. Another old friend was Moira Horwood, who volunteered in World War II, met her husband in Europe and went to live in Canada. Dulcie and she phoned each other a couple of times every year, remaining close friends despite not having seen each other since the 1940s.

My visit with Dulcie led me to reflect on two main things:

• What has made her life so full and content

• What can we pass on to our learners from her experience at Collegiate and her life

The synchronicity that jumped at me was Dulcie Floweday illustrating the PERMA model of positive psychology and wellbeing. PERMA is possibly the most well-known model of wellbeing.

Developed by Martin E.P. Seligman (2011), this acronym represents the elements needed for wellbeing or a “flourishing” life.

These are:

• Positive emotion – experiencing positive emotions such as happiness, contentment, pride, serenity, hope, optimism, trust, confidence, and gratitude;

• Engagement – immersing oneself deeply in activities that use one’s strengths to experience flow, an optimal state marked with razor-sharp concentration, intense focus, and intrinsic motivation to further develop;

• Relationships – having positive, secure, and trusting relationships;

• Meaning – belonging to and serving something with a sense of purpose and belief that it is larger than the self; and

• Accomplishment – pursuing success, mastery, competence, and achievement for its own sake.

• Since the development of this theory, it has been suggested that another important aspect is physical health or vitality – exercise, nutrition, and sleep.

Importantly, one of the critical aspects of PERMA is choosing to be positive, to engage, to have good relationships, to find meaning and purpose and to pursue success – these are all aspects that require us to find the good, the strengths, the positives and to shy away from the negativity that is so tempting to delve into and allow us to be consumed by misery, moaning and negativity.

Developing positive education at Collegiate is organic and we need to find how best to equip our learners with the skills and knowledge to live flourishing lives, modelled so well by our 103-year-old Old Girl, Dulcie Floweday.