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Sorry about the delay in responding to your question, Chris. A report on the Reunion and peripheral activities should appear in tomorrow's 'Keighley News', unless they found room for it last week. However, in brief, there were 33 of us there this year, including Mike & Mary from Tasmania, Gil Swift's grand-daughter, Kate Metcalfe, who is Events Secretary at the rugby club (clearly its in the blood),and, of course, Spike Rannard. Four people who had paid didn't show up but there were also a few new faces, as well as one or two 'returners' who hadn't been seen for a while.
The total number was disappointing, seventeen down on last year. I had thought that pitching it right at the end of the month would bring in more people but I had letters and messages from several people who were going to be on holiday - so travel, not the grim reaper, conspired against us. This next year, after canvasing opinion (and still am) I'm thinking of reverting to nearer the beginning of the month.
The occasion itself was great fun, as ever, though Joe McDowell assured me it had been 'the best yet', while the meal was sumptuous as ever, and Janet Feather, the cater, having already done us proud, then offered generous 'doggy bags' to any who cared to take them - and several people did. So, what we lacked in numbers we seem to have made up for in spirit!
We are almost on the brink of the tri-centenary of the founding of the first grammar school in Keighley, the Drake and Tonson School, whose founding Gareth Whittaker very kindly researched for me. Apparently John Drake left money for the founding of such a school in 1714, it seems to have been established some time after, then amalgamated with a rival school, set up on the other side of town at more or less the same time, in 1716. I am taking that date to be our founding one, the establishment of the Drake and Tonson School; so we'll be looking to make a splash the year after next. If anyone has any bright ideas about where we might advertise it nationally, or even more widely in the North, I should be very grateful. The Saga magazine has given up advertising such events, I checked in 'The Dalesman' and 'Cumbria' but they seem not to do so either, so at a loss.
Photos now posted under 'Reunions' and, if I can work out how to do it, I'll also include there the list of this year's participants.
Bracken, Robert (1938-46) & June
Butterfield, Roy (1958-65)
Ebden, Stuart 1956-63) and Penny
Holt, Colin (1946-51)
Kirkley, David
Lougee, Marten (1954-62)
McDowell, Joe (1939-46)
Marsden, Keith (1936-41)
Marston, Terry (1952-60)
Metcalfe, Kate
Newiss, Derek (1950-55)
Nichols, Mike (1943-46) & Mary
Ogden, Jim (1940-47) & Mark Watson (son-in-law)
Pickles, Denis (1945-50)
Place, Bill (1951-56)
Rannard, George (1943-60)
Rannard, John (1956-63)
Robinson, Allan (1958-65)
Rotheram, Jan
Sabey, Denis (1951-57)
Seeley, David (1945-50)
Simpson, Doreen
Smith, John (1939-45)
Sutcliffe, Derek
Thompson, Doug (1951-58) & Gill
Webster, Dorothy
Whittaker, Gareth (1954-59)
Young, Peter (1951-56)