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The Kowhai Festival 50th Anniversary Dinner of Combined Services Clubs will be held at Bowls Warkworth on Friday, October 11.
Members of Warkworth Lions, Kowhai Coast Lions and Warkworth Rotary, festival past presidents and current members of the festival committee will attend the dinner. Special guests will be visitors from Warkworth’s Sister Cities in Canada and Japan.
The programme includes two guest speakers – Auckland Council events manager David Burt and mouth painting artist Grant Sharman. Grant will speak about his life before and after breaking his neck during a schoolboys rugby game. He was in the 5th Form at Kings College at the time and in the top educational stream, with plans to become a pilot. However, he had to abandon any hope of flying when the accident left him a tetraplegic.
He spent 11 years at the Otara Spinal Unit and, during this time, started painting using his mouth. This eventually provided him with financial independence and quality of life, and in 1990, he married a nurse he had met at the spinal unit.
A special 50th Kowhai Festival cake will be cut at the dinner by past and present festival committee presidents.
Raffle proceeds from the evening will be donated to spinal research.
