St. Albans College, Buenos Aires

 

Reminiscences by a 1957 leaver


It has been great receiving an email, together with some photographs, from Francis Edwards, who was at St. Albans for ten years.

He writes:

F ollowing graduation from St. Albans I finished my bachillerato in Cordoba, then went to Universidad Catolica de Cordoba and earned a M.A. in Architecture -and the dubious distinction as the only Protestant student in attendance- which amused the Jesuits no end!

Married in Cordoba, moved to BA to work at Esso, and then transferred to Miami, FL on assignment.

Left Esso in 1980, and moved to Los Angeles, where I remained for 13 years. Divorced, and re-married two years' later, I moved to El Paso, TX (not a preferred tourist destination, believe me!), and then to San Antonio in 1995.

Business-wise, after I left Esso, and remained in the U.S. I have done pretty much everything to survive. However, 9 years' ago, my present wife Martha baked a cake, and we began to do cakes and flans on a commercial basis. Bought a small bakery, grew, and grew, and grew, and now distribute hundreds of cakes and thousands of flans monthly via a national foodservice company all over the U.S.

(And boy, they look good! Have a look at www.treslechesgourmetcakes.com or www.bulverdebakery.com )

A typical "American Dream" kind of story, I suppose, specially when it happens to an immigrant! I have 6 children, two sets of twins among them (one set a gift from each wife), and 3 of the six are now married. My oldest son, Thomas, is a Secret Service agent, the others have regular jobs. My younger set, Emily and Patrick, are here with us in S.A., and Emily is preparing to take over the business in a year or two.

Anyway, I was telling Martha this morning that I could write a book on those years at St.Albans. As I commented my Internet "finds" with Emily this morning, she said it sounded like a Harry Potter story, to which I replied: any time you see a film about life in an English public school, your father is "in it", because St. Albans, St. George's and St. Andrews, were true transplants (in those days, at least) of typical English schools.

On the OP website I was reminded of old man Hearle in his everyday grey flannel suit, and stiff leg + plus the cane he carried in his pocket. Of  Charlie Cohen, of course, always reading something leaning against a wall, of Jimmy Cappanera, Roger, Dick, Chloe, all the Runnacles brothers (7 of them, good grief!), Miss Bindon, Srta. Castelli, Srta. Orione (the redhead), eating roast beef at the Head Table, and on, and on, and on!.

How about Cohen's O.T. and N.T. classes, not to mention Math! And what about Padre Franklin from Holy Trinity Church, and those endless Evensong services we were dragged to? "Oh God our help in Ages past, our Hope for years to come". Sang that a few hundred times over the years at Holy Trinity! I remember Padre Franklin drifting off to sleep in class, and us tip-toeing out of the room leaving him there!

Francis Edwards
   1947-1957

Francis has also sent photographs of groups. See here.