Alan Williams is trying to locate Peter Whelan, an Old Boy who went on to RMA Sandhurst. Alan writes:
There is a group of us having a reunion in August and we all would like Peter to be there, but he has disappeared off the radar! It was a very long time ago (1965-66), so my enquiry is a long shot I know.
Please get in touch if you can help out.
Christopher Williams writes to let us know that his father, Dr Raymond Williams CBE, an Old Boy who went on to become the Director of the Scotland Yard Forensic Science Laboratory, passed away last November. An obituary was printed by the Bournemouth Evening Echo.
Pascal Cousseau writes to us from France to ask if we can help to trace Andy Chamberlain. He says:
I have been involved, a long time ago, in the exchange between Bournemouth School for Boys and Cholet in the west of France. I also spent one year as a French assistant in your school, from September 1982 to July 1983. I had a very good English friend at this time, Andrew Chamberlain, but I lost personal contact with him several year ago. He was in your school roughly between 1974 to 1978. He was living in St Lukes’ Road by this time and went to Aberystwyth University to follow French Studies.
Unfortunately, Andy Chamberlain is not one of our members, although we know that he used to play for the Old Boys cricket club in the late 1970s while still at school and in university holidays. If you have any information about Andy, please let us know.
Roger Shore has written to us to share a panorama photo (PDF, 2Mb) of the school from 1933. Roger writes:
My father was at Bournemouth School between 1929 and 1936. I followed in his footsteps between 1960 and 1967. There were six masters who taught both me and my father, although I can only identify five of them in that photo at present. That would be Messrs Cushion, Dodds (a truly dreadful man, as I’m sure you already either know, or will have heard!) Walker, Williamson and Wiseman. The 6th – Mr. Dixon (who went on to become deputy head) – I haven’t yet identified…
Roger is surely right that this may be of interest to some of you, although as he notes the very youngest in that photo will be at least 90 by now.
From the Bournemouth Evening Echo (17th January 2013) we learn that Bob Roberts, who taught PE and acted as a careers advisor at Bournemouth School for 27 years, died on 31st December 2012. Mr Roberts, often known as Paddy, had achieved his 100th birthday earlier in 2012.
Update: Mr Roberts’ son John has contacted us, and said that Old Boys would be welcome at the funeral service, to be held at the Bournemouth Crematorium on Monday 28th January at noon. He adds: “Dad joined the school in 1948 and retired in 1975.”
We have been contacted by a potential biographer of a Newlyn artist called Robin Arthur Davis (so named on his death certificate) who lived between 1925-1999. It appears that he attended Bournemouth Grammar School under his birth name of Arthur Charles Davis. If anyone has any information about Mr Davis, or knew him, please do get in touch and we will put you in contact with the writer.
Bournemouthians Jon Beswick and James Balfour have recently returned from a British Expedition to the South Pole for the 100 year anniversary of Captain Scott. The expedition was led by adventurer Neil Laughton. During the expedition Jon tested a prototype shelter which his architecture practice designed. When they reached the Pole, Jon and James celebrated by playing the first ever game of cricket, golf and rugby. They were also the first people wear black tie at the Pole. A video of their exploits is here.
A reminder that the annual general meeting will be held at Bournemouth School, East Way on Thursday 4th October at 7.00 pm. All regular and new attendees will be very welcome.
A date for your 2013 diary – the annual dinner will be on Friday 20th September 2013.
The 2012 OBA annual dinner will be held on Friday 21st September. This year we have moved to the Carlton Hotel, just up the road from the Queens Hotel. Our guest speaker will be Mark Austin, ITN newscaster and Old Boy, subject to last minute news crises such as the euro collapsing, again!
Please complete the form at the end of our newsletter and please note the new address to return it to. We hope that we can build our numbers again this year after a slightly disappointing response last time. See you there!
Simon Hird has just emailed out the 2nd edition of the new-style OBA newsletter. If you didn’t get it, you can download it by clicking here. However, this probably means that your email address isn’t up to date on our database, so please contact us to put that right too!