Hello Mr. Livingston,
I am an ex-pupil of Elmgrove now living in Whyalla, South Australia. Goodness me, it seems so long ago that I would walk from Queen Victoria street all the way to school every morning. Apart from my first day when I was left at the front gates with all the other new (crying!) pupils, I would walk the whole way on my own.
After a few days I met up with a lad who lived in Bloomfield Avenue, Drew Clawson was his name, and he became my wee mucker after that. I was having a bit of a chinwag with my father in law, he migrated to Australia from Belfast in 1962, about the 'ould times' when he and I were growing up in Belfast. He, like myself also went to Elmgrove, and as we talked about the school, I mentioned to him that I was going to have a bit of a look on the internet to see if I could get any information on the school.
Well I was not expecting to find anything, but I typed in 'Elmgrove primary school', and low and behold, up came a hand full of matches to my query. So there you go, roughly 35 years ago I was sitting behind a little desk wondering how the all the people fitted into the big radio that the teacher used to set up at the front of the class to listen to B.B.C. school radio programmes, and now here I am sitting at my home computer desk wondering at the infinite size of this electronic world called the internet!
I wonder if it is possible to find out from the school records who was in my class in 1964-65, and again in 1967 and 1969?
I don't know if you have records that go back to then or not, but I would really like to jog my memory and put names to the faces that I can see in my mind, and maybe put faces to the names that I have forgotten.
My name is Thomas Frederick Peter Hanna, and I was born 16/7/59.
I don't know if it will help, but kids who were in my class in various years were, Pauline Wilson, Loretta Wilson, Jacqueline McKay, Elaine Robinson, Roland McIntosh, William Christian, Jim Kitchen, Stephen Cochrane. There was another boy by the name of Tate, I think his first name was Billy, his mother was adored by us kids because she was the head of the dinner ladies and she used to give us mountains of food and seconds, and thirds!
Isn't it terrible that they are the only ones that I can remember the names of? I may be wrong, but back then I think the caretakers name was Mr. Campbell. The teachers that I can remember having were Miss Smith and Mrs. Downey.
I can Picture the Head masters face as clear as though he was standing next to me, but I cannot for the life of me think of his name. Was it McClements, or was there a teacher with that name?
On one particular occasion I had to go to the Head masters office because I had a toothache, and the Head asked for a look to see where my sore tooth was. Believe it or not, before I knew what was happening, he removed his fingers from my mouth and there between his finger and thumb was the offending tooth!
Well I am off now to have a little tour around the rest of Elmgrove on the net, so for now all the best.
Tom Hanna
Unfortunately not the ones with chocolate chips.
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