Alvena WELLSTEAD / MAIN (née LAIHOVETSKY) [2018-1983]

Alvena lived in HK 1919-1940 as Alvena Laihovetsky, except for a couple of years in the early 1920s when the family went to Vancouver, Canada chicken farming (unsuccessfully), and 1946-1959 as Alvena Wellstead.

She was born in Japan to Russian parents who happened to be outside Russia at the time of the Bolshevik revolution. Her father registered her birth with the outgoing Imperial Russian Consul in Nagasaki, who took the money and ran.

Alvena remained stateless until she was naturalised in 1940 in time for evacuation to Australia via Manila.

She qualified Licentiate Trinity College London. Before WWII she taught piano from home, was Brown Owl at St Andrews Kowloon Brownies, and attended Central British School (later renamed KGV) where she was a senior prefect.

She helped in the Library transfer from the old to the new CBS premises after she left school.

In the early 1950s Alvena taught at the original Royden House School at Repulse Bay.

She did not visit HK again after 1959, but her son Geoff Wellstead was a fairly frequent visitor for business and pleasure from 1976 to 2013.