The Annual
Tower Reunion
 The
annual reunion took place on 13th October. This year we
celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of the opening of the new Tower
Block and rest of the new school in 1957. We had a fiftieth
anniversary cake, with a photo of the tower in its heyday printed on
it. We also had speeches from two people who were there at the
time when the school opened, Peter Douglas and David James, who gave
us some of their memories of the time.
The reunion started as normal with the arrival of John Ingham and
Nick Smith, both of 1963. However, this year they were even earlier
than usual, as they had come to help me to set up. I had more to set
up this year and less time to do it in. Thanks guy. We were set up
and ready to go by 12:30 and within seconds the first people were
arriving.
This year we had quite a few new faces, which is very welcome.
There were quite a few people from the earlier history of the
school. The earliest was Norman French, who went to the school from
1946 to 1950. He went to the school soon after it was formed. He had
brought along some old photos and other material, which now appears
elsewhere on the website. One of them was one of those long
panoramic photos of the whole school, which was still in its
original cardboard tube and in perfect condition. The photo was
taken in July 1947. On the tube was its price, 3/6d.
 There
were several people who came along and said to me “I won’t know
anyone here” and in many cases I was able to put them straight away
with someone who had been at the school in the same period and they
were soon reminiscing. I failed a couple of times.
Two early arrivals were Peter Douglas and David James who had
both volunteered to speak about the period when the new school
opened. Peter’s tales of the school will be very familiar to
regular readers of the website, but the bigger test for me was that
although Peter and I have regularly swapped e-mails over the last
couple of years, Peter lives in New York, and we had not met before
today. Peter had timed his first visit back to the UK for 12
years to enable him to come to the reunion, the big question would
we recognise each other from the days when we were 11 years old and
sometimes played together in Greville Avenue, in Spinney Hill.
Well, he did not look totally familiar to me, but then my memories
of times that far back are extremely hazy, but you can tell it was
Peter, as we have a photo on the website of Peter and I with Peter
Crofts, another ex-pupil, sometime in the late 50's.
Peter and David told us in the speeches about the times around
the opening of the new school buildings in 1957, and to add to the
knowledge of those times, we had the photos on the wall of the
building of the school, its opening, plus we had the TV Times
for 13th October 1957 and the top twenties of the time. After
the speeches Mary Kelly cut the Tower Anniversary Cake. Mary
had organised the making of the cake with the help of Mick Pepper
who knew the right people to get it done professionally for a good
price.
After everyone had had a piece of the cake the school tour
departed. It easily departed on time, as I had announced that
since there were 43 people going on the trip, some people would have
to sit downstairs on the bus, and the upstairs seats would be first
come first served. After that it was easy, everyone was down
there like a shot, tickets in hand. I asked Maureen Kirby (Tarlton)
if she would write a report of the trip, as I did not go myself, and
that has now been on the website since the day after the reunion.
He wrote a report of what she did and what she saw, but Peter
Douglas, having returned to New York after a further couple of weeks
in the UK a, has written a piece about what he felt, and gives a
different perspective. Both make interesting reading.
Click on their faces on the right to read each of their reports in
the panel below.
Forty three people went on the tour and a donation of £75 has been made to Unity College for
providing the school tour. Jane Chatburn, the librarian, who
lead the tour, said that they have decided to spend £25 on buying a
large book for the library, which will be inscribed as donated by
former pupils, and to put £50 into their contribution to the
Macmillan Nurse fund. "It is a fund that we have
supported over the years since the death of both Sara Allin and Judy
Herring, both staff from Trinity".
The reunion was a bit quiet while the tour was gone, apart from
the 1972/73 group. None of them went on the tour, preferring
to stay at the pub and chat, and they certainly did that in their
usual happy and noisy way - great. Once the tour came back,
the place was busy again. The reunion thinned out a little
earlier than normal because the Rugby World Cup Semi Final, England
versus France was game kicking off at 8pm, so people needed to get
where they planned to be to watch the game. However, there was
still some 20 people left at 8pm, when the reunion officially ended.
Of course, a couple of people on the tour did what they always
did best when they were at school. The bus pulled into the
school car park and the nipped off down to re-live the Romany.
Did not hear how they found it.
Who
came the furthest this year to the reunion? Two years ago we
had Sharon Rose who flew over from New York for just one night to
come to the reunion. This year we had Chris Kent who came over from
Las Vegas and she has a piece in Where are they now, Peter Douglas also came from New
York and John Challen who works in Hong Kong. Peter had timed timed his two week trip to be around the reunion, and
John Challen had timed his visit from Hong Kong to coincide with the
reunion. However, John is an Airline Captain, and lives in the
UK, USA and Hong Kong, so it is not clear where he really came from!
So not sure who gets the accolade, but since there is no prize,
congratulations to all of them for coming from so far.
Do you have something to add about your experiences at the
reunion, the people you met again, the things you found out? Please
send me a paragraph or two and I will add it here, as well as your
photos.
 One thing that I announced was that assuming people still wanted
another reunion next year, then the date would change. The current
date in October has never been very convenient for me. The general
view was that people wanted another one next year, so the most
likely date will be 8th November.
Quite a few people had brought along photos and other things for
the website, and I will get the new material added to the website
over the next few weeks. One person even brought a few more photos
of last year’s reunion. Dennis Rooke brought along a wooden
money box. Mr Burgess had made them when he first arrived to
teach at the school. They were used for collecting tuck shop
money. Each form apparently had one, and Dennis had the one
for Form 1. He had several excuses why he had a money box for
a girl’s form in his attic. I will attempt to do it justice
with some photos on the website, and will use it next year for
collecting money at the reunion, although it was designed long
before the days of £2 coin.
See you next year.
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