Joyce died peacefully in the early hours of Wednesday 12 August at the Julia Wallace Rest Home Hospital in Palmerston North aged 85. Joyce spent her life in the Manawatu. She was the third and youngest child of Thomas and Annie Elcox who lived in Rongotea where her father owned a stock cartage business.

During WW 2 she moved with her widowed mother and siblings to a small dairy farm in Kellows Line, Bainesse. She attended Bainesse School, worked in a dairy at Himitangi and trained and worked as a hair dresser.

She married Val Alve in Feb 1951 shortly before her mother died. Her four children: Terence, Margaret, Gordon and Christine were born between 1952 and 1965. After her marriage she moved with Val to the Alve family farm at Rangitane near the Opiki Suspension (Toll) Bridge. Between 1953-1955 Val and Joyce worked for farmer Paddy Quin living in a cottage at Makerua, before spending a year share milking for Jim Andrews at Bainesse.

In 1956 they moved to the Alve Homestead at Rangitane where Val share milked for his father, before buying the farm around the time the Manawatu R. high stop banks were built and a new house built outside the river catchment area in 1963. They continued dairy farming to 1970 when the farm was sold and they moved to spend the rest of their lives in Palmerston North. In PN Joyce found employment variously at the Longburn dairy factory, PDC tearooms and cooking at the Chiswick Park rest home.

Val died in 1999 and Joyce lived with her son Gordon until she moved to the Julia Wallace Home in September 2013. Joyce is survived by her four children; 9 grandchildren and 9 great grandchildren.

Joyce's funeral service will be in the Beauchamps funeral home chapel at 11.30am on Sat. 15 Aug. at 11.30am. This will be followed by a light lunch. A graveside committal service will be at the Kelvin Grove Cemetery at 2pm.

Yet again the Mighty Manawatu R. in flood. A number of us walked to the eastern tower of the old Opiki toll bridge (picture centre) Easter Sunday following the mini-Reunion. We also visited the flood pumps at Burkes Drain bridge (25% from top and left of pic) over highway 56, which are designed to quickly de-flood the Taonui Basin catchment area (top right of pic).

Just to keep you on your toes, www.alve.org.nz has become www.alve.nz 

In fact if you continue to use www.alve.org.nz it will direct to www.alve.nz for several months, but when the longer URL sub runs out it will be gone. It's all done in the name of simplicity, we hope.
Cheers,
Terry

P.S. We will have online registrations for the Easter Day 2015 mini-Reunion available very early in the new year. This will include pricing info. Watch this space or, better still, join our eList and get news red hot, off the press.