When Pam Filicky died recently her friends asked the family, what cause they could donate to in her memory in lieu of flowers. The family suggested the Linwood College Rebuild fund as an appropriate gift as “she loved Linwood High so much.”

Pam spent much of her adult life living overseas but her memories of her happy years at Linwood High never left her. All her children grew up with her recounting stories of both New Zealand and Linwood College. “Everyone knew how important these two places were to Mum, these were the two places she identified with” says her daughter Johan. Donating towards a seat named in her memory “would be perfect.”

Pam Filicky was born in Southland moving to Christchurch when she was five or six years old. She called Christchurch home for the rest of her adult life. When she married, her husband who was in the U.S. Navy, she got to see and experience a good chunk of the world. Two places the family lived which she was very fond of were Exmouth, Western Australia and Hawai’i. Daughter Johan says, “Our whole whanau loved them both so much. Mum always joked that she was a Kiwi, why would she want to go to Aussie? Only to fall hopelessly in love with the laid-back lifestyle of a small coastal Outback town. In Hawai’i, she felt like it was a tropical version of New Zealand. The family lived on O’ahu and she worked at a posh department store in Ala Moana mall, in Honolulu. She would occasionally wear her old school tie to work, and everyone loved it!

Many of our cousins would ring Mum up and ask her about New Zealand and for school reports and she would gladly answer everything.

Mum and Dad had been married for 50 years, before her health took a turn. Dad is from just south of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and his family were always just in awe of Mum.

Pam leaves behind her husband, two daughters, three grandchildren, and two great grandchildren.

Pam Filicky – 19 March 1950 – 03 April 2022