Mr Mahadzir Hashim

Mr Mahadzir (or "Sir", to us) was our first principal (the title then was "Guru Besar" only). He was a young lad with two small kids. His wife was a lecturer at the nearby teacher training college.

I didn't know much about him, but what I knew was that he was a strict principal (as most of us remember him).

What else do I remember of him? He was very disappointed with students who didn't take care of their dental hygiene. He told us that at his age (then) he had not lost any tooth yet (and to us that was an achievement since many of those we knew of his age would have lost one or two tooth already by then!).

My batch was a noisy batch, especially the classes of Alpha and Beta. Once we were so noisy that the clock in the staff room (right underneath our classrooms) fell down! All of us were summoned by him. Zainal Azim and I, being the only junior prefects from our batch, had special scolding - in front of ALL our friends. I remember him calling us "Useless Prefects!". Honestly, I never held any ill-feelings towards him since I think we deserved the scolding (we were not that effective anyway). As a punishment, we (Alpha and Beta students) were not allowed to go to the state stadium (Stadium Sultan Muhammad IV) to watch our Under-15 and Under-18 soccer teams play in the finals! yeah, it was the STATE level - those were the days, when our soccer teams were feared off by other teams! ALL other students were ferried to the stadium to cheer for the teams. I remember the warden (I think it was Cikgu Mat Nor) was upset too because he had to monitor us (in our detention class) hence he couldn't be at the stadium either! To most students, the fringe benefit of the outing was to be able to enjoy some local delicacies near the stadium such as "colek" and rojak.

To my batch, Sir managed to keep the SAME teacher for us for Maths all the way from form 1 until form 3. A friend remembers when we went to see him (before he left the school) Sir reminded us to study hard for our LCE exam (that we were to sit later that year). He said that if we couldn't get A for Maths we should go and "hang Mr Anuar", jokingly, or course! (Mr Anuar Abdullah was our Math teacher then. I want to write about him too, but much later..).

In March 1977, we heard Sir was about to leave us. We also heard that he did not ask for the transfer. Those who used to hate him suddenly felt that they were going to miss him.

Under the leadership of our headboy (Wan Azman Wan Ahmad, now a prof in Universiti Malaya), all the students contributed a small amount of money to purchase a parting gift for Sir. The prefects made an additional (separate) collection. The gifts were plaques made of silver (specially ordered from the craft centre in Penjara Pengkalan Chepa). I was lucky enough to have the chance to take a pix with the gifts:

The one with the shape of Kelantan map was from the students and the one with the shape of the school crest was from the prefects.

The school prefects managed to get a chance to visit him and family at the principal's residence. We also brought our gift.



At the end of it, we managed to get a group pix taken too:

me(with long plaits) sitting in front with his son on my lap, and his daughter on K Nik's :-)