Then

Now

Who?

Now a grandfather of five boys.  St Edward’s - often wondered why me?,  so many called, so few chosen., all left with gifts   Five years that changed my life,  and I feel privileged to have been in the scene.   For many years I was  a member of  HCPT The Pilgrimage Trust taking disabled/disadvantaged children for a fun filled week in Lourdes each Easter - where else would anyone wear such a hat! Fun and Lourdes? - yes, they really do go together!

This year I had the pleasure of revisiting the St Joseph’s school, founded by the Brothers in 1855 three years before the Apparitions.   I enjoyed a conversation with Brother Bernard Joliveau at the Bureau de Messes.  Sadly 2008 is my last year - so now I have hung up the hat for the last time.  

"I was at St Edward's from April 1966 to the college moving to Liverpool in the summer of 1968. I was at Woolton College for the first year of the new school up to summer of 1969 when I returned home to Manchester to complete my education at De la Salle, similarly run by brothers. I then went to Liverpool Polytechnic where I failed a law degree but subsequently graduated with the Open University and am now a primary school teacher.

I have one son, Tom, who is nearly 22 and lives with me. I fill in what spare time I have with art and music. I paint and have occasional exhibitions and I play with a ceilidh band. I play renaissance woodwinds (recorders, shawm, rauschpfeife) as well as oboe, guitar and various types of bagpipes.

I also enjoy keeping in touch with Ex-St Edwardians (a term I coined when I revived the school paper Juvenilia, a paper conceived in 1967ish written and printed by the boys and sent home to parents. It was Clive Baugh, from Southampton and now living in Canada, who came up with the title.

It is heart-warming that so many of us e-mail and meet up with such regularity."

It is with great pleasure that I recall my days at St., Edwards, from early 1957 to the end of 1960.

Father of two girls (now grown women with their own families), 7 grandchildren and 1 great grandchild.

After a very varied and interesting working life in the UK, from an appreciation of engineering, shipping and export accounting at Courtaulds, to export trouble shooting at Massey Ferguson, and eventually personnel administration in the Employment Service, with a period of self-employment as a book-keeper/administrator for good measure, I was diagnosed as blind in 1993.   I was registered as such in 1995 and retired to Canada in 1998, re-married in 2000 and am still resisting all attempts to lose my Britishness. Other than my youngest daughter, my wife ( a crazy Cannuck) is the only person to understand what makes this crazy Englishman tick, though neither will ever admit it.

My time is now largely spent in gardening, cooking and with computers, building, repairing, upgrading, trying to teach myself web languages and cleaning up others’ normal day to day computer-use mistakes. Add to that lots and lots of research.

As reading is the core to advancement I spent 4 years as director on a local literacy board, and then 4 years with the provincial board. At the same time 4 years with local child care and a new group incorporated for medical research.

I do hope more “old boys” become curious and seek out that small but so important part of their past and join us at this site.

“Never forget that we are the sum of our experiences, the good, the bad and the indifferent. Praise the bad as they formed our character, praise the good as they enhanced our character and the indifferent fits neatly in between”.

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Who will be next - Images are optional