I suspect 'Guilder' that you were one year ahead of me. Dave Farrer and Pete Toolan are still, I believe, alive and well. I played cricket in the First XI with both of them and with 'Jasper' Cliff. I am truly sorry to hear of his death.Guilder wrote: ↑Fri 01 Nov, 2013 10:23 amI was there in the early 60s but moved away from Leeds to London many years ago. Does anyone remember, or better still have news of, Dave Farrer, Pete Toolan, John McKenna or Eddie Coyne? All friends of mine with whom I lost touch. Sadly my great pals Bernard Cliff and Paul Roe with whom I did retain contact, have died, both far too young.Fond, mostly, memories of many of the masters mentioned here: "Sister" Edwards; Jim Grady (whom I last saw with characteristic fag on in a bookies in Leeds); John McIntyre, a real gent and a great history teacher, one of the few I remember who conveyed his love of the subject; Frs Woodhall, Culshaw and Yarnold who took the 1st X1 for cricket in my time.
Of the teachers, Jim Grady had taught my older brother Michael (an excellent Latin scholar) and found me lazy, stupid and odiously precocious (not unfairly, it must be said); McIntyre was a gentleman whose lessons were meticulously planned and 'recited' - this I know because he had taught my other brother, Peter, who maintained verbatim notes that I took with me to his classes and to which McIntyre would very occasionally refer if a particular minor detail escaped him. Fr Woodhall taught maths to 2B. He was more or less innumerate but a thoroughly gentle and admirable man (who I was later to learn was an outstanding theologian). Fr Culshaw had a genuine love of English Literature but an unworthy tendency to have favourites (upon whom he would heap praise) and victims (whom he would torment). To Fr Yarnold I owed the award of my cricket First XI colours while still in the 5th form - an award that so appalled my older brother Peter that he promptly burned his own. I suspect Fr Yarnold doubted that, idle as I was, I would never clear the 5 O level barrier to the sixth and thought it was then or never.
Finally. I must record my life long admiration of and debt to the late Fr Paul Edwards - a highly sensitive, tortured but deeply decent man who did much to civilise St Michael's through his opposition to and hand in the abolition of the profoundly distasteful use of ritualised corporal punishment. I know 'Sister' was often mocked and derided - but he came to officiate at the funeral Mass for my father (who died, to my despair, when I was in the sixth) and who later (when I had drifted away from 'Scholarship Sixth with exams untaken) sent to my home fully completed University application forms that required only my signature (with a note hoping I could find the time to sign them and summon the energy to get them in the post) and thus changed the course of my life for the better. By chance I learned the intriguing and sad story of when and how he died and I do hope he has found the peace that escaped him throughout a life lived AMDG.