Yvonne Lloyd was the deserving recipient of the 40th annual Wee Waa Lions Club Senior Citizen Award at the official Seniors Luncheon.
The ceremony and special lunch was attended by 60 local seniors and residents and was held at its traditional home at the Wee Waa Bowling Club.
The Country Women’s Association started the day with a lovely morning tea, catering was provided with special thanks to Lions Club member Connie Smith, and distributed with the help of Wee Waa SRC students, who helped serve and clean up.
Narrabri Shire mayor Darrell Tiemens was delighted to attend as a guest and assisted with the 40th-year presentation proceedings for the day.
Yvonne is renowned for her dedicated service to the Wee Waa community through associations such as Vinnies most recently, and in the past, Meals on Wheels.
While she was born in Coonabarabran, she moved to Wee Waa with her husband, who worked as a cotton farmhand.
Yvonne served many years in various roles with the local Wee Waa Pony Club camps which she joined when her daughter first started riding, and continued to help until her grandchildren attended.
She was one of the many kitchen helpers, a camp matron, and a dorm mother to the younger children in attendance.
She is probably best known in the community for her sewing skills and ability to come up with imaginative costumes for local school plays/concerts and dance groups.
Over the years she has sewn hundreds of costumes for all local schools but in particular, St Joseph’s School when she sewed an astonishing 262 costumes for the production of The Lion King, which is still spoken about today.
Yvonne is a great cook, helping with funeral wakes and families who have lost loved ones.
In times of floods, she has provided home-cooked food for the SES volunteers and anyone else helping out in these flood times.
Yvonne never asks for anything in return and does not seek recognition for any of her efforts in helping others, she just does it from the heart.
“She was always there to help and always busy, she never made a big thing out of it,” said Lions Club member Bruce Gray.
Yvonne did not want to give a speech and had to be coerced by her friend Edith Clutterbuck and two daughters, Louise Russell and Odette Avery, to attend the luncheon, because she was concerned about missing her shift at Vinnies for the day.
“Mum was so shocked when they announced she was the winner, and of course, she was very humble about it,” said Louise.
Louise also praised her mother’s cooking and generous spirit, recalling a time when she would take morning tea out to local SES members during the floods.
The special act was even covered by the Sydney Morning Herald at the time.
“She was surrounded by water but would cook and the SES would meet her on the railway line, and she would take plates of food and sandwiches out for them,” said Louise.
“Once they even had morning tea on the railway line, dad would put mum in a dingy and pull her out to meet them in a boat.”
Odette was also very proud of all her mother had accomplished in her 82 years, and just knew she had to get her to the awards luncheon on the day.
“We’re so proud of mum, she is always putting herself out to cook, sew, or do anything that is needed of her,” said Odette.
“When she was sewing hundreds of outfits for school plays and productions, she was enjoying it just as much as the kids enjoyed wearing the costumes.”
Ron Lowder was the original organiser of the Seniors Award 40 years ago and thought the award played an important part in recognising truly local heroes in a small town.
“It’s good for the outlying towns to have some recognition of their elders, and it’s a great tradition for the town of Wee Waa,” said Mr Lowder.
The Wee Waa Bowling Club also gave Yvonne a $100 cash prize to go along with her Lions Club Award shield and Namoi Care Connect organised getting everyone to the luncheon.
Wee Waa Public School, St Joseph’s School and Namoi Valley Christian School all delivered special presentations and performances throughout the day.
To order photos from this page click here
