First edition published March 2010; cover design, layout and design by Barbara Mueller; Printing digitally by Shumani Printers, Cape Town.

About the Book:

This book evolved from a project to build a website to record what our class have been doing since they left Bishops, fifty years ago.

In deciding who is in our group we have tried to be inclusive – so everyone who at one time has been part of the group that finished Matric in 1960 is in. Just a few who either dropped behind or went ahead have opted out after ‘explaining that that they have identified with another year’ – as if that mattered!

With cajoling we have included many of those who were in Post Matric in 1960, virtually all who left earlier, and most who finished later. With uncanny precision we find there are exactly 99 “in the group”. Of these, regrettably 23 have passed on. The living 76 have all sent something on their lives over the past 50 years. Yes, amazingly, 100% have responded! The effort to get action has been considerable and four laggards finally responded to phone calls to Tasmania, Zambia, Vancouver Island and an island on the Thames, a week ago.

The initial job of finding where everyone lives and contact details has been done with amazing skill and energy by our class sleuth, Rob Phillips. The editor claims to have found only one person that evaded Rob – he tracked Dave Barton to his home in England using Facebook. Another amazing source of information has been Mac Bisset who has resolved numerous problems of historical detail.


The website http://od1960.wordpress.com which already contains well over 500 photos and all types of ridiculous material relating to our class has about four times the content of this book. This will hopefully grow and continue to be a focus of interest in years to come. Despite being hidden from search engines, to date there have been over 12 000 website hits.

The complex job of converting core features of the website to a printed book using DTP techniques has been done by extraordinarily helpful and competent Barbara Mueller of New Voices.

I do hope you will enjoy this book.

Gerald Rosenthal – 5 March 2010

Comments on Website Blog:

Memo to: Class of ‘60

From: Eddie Sedgwick.

I think I can say without fear of contradiction that our 50th class reunion over this past weekend has been an unqualified success!

Why? for three reasons

1. Rob Phillips did an amazing Sherlock Holmes like job in tracing every single one of us.

2. Gerald Rosenthal’s remarkable magnus opus in producing an informative and all encompassing website and book which we all received at the cocktail party. Having got everyone to produce their own potted biographies must have been a huge task but boy was it worthwhile. I found reading these pen sketches fascinating and one arrived at the various functions knowing what one’s colleagues had been up to over the last 50 years. I was also most gratified that so many of my old classmates complimented me on the few philosophical lines I had scribbled in my conclusion.

3. The fact that so many travelled from so far to attend – the USA Canada the UK and from all over the RSA. If it had only been us locals it would just not have been the same so thanks guys for making the effort and financial sacrifice to come and make it the memorable occasion it turned out to be.
Yours ever
Eddie

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