John, Found your message this afternoon and will try and supply you with as much information as is relevant. We lived on the Hawksworth Wood Estate in northwest Leeds from 1925. In 1931 I sat for a scholarship exam, passed and was accepted at the Leeds Modern School. Being just 10 when I was accepted I was in the first form and went all through to the upper sixth The headmaster of the school, Dr. G.F. Morton graduated from Manchester University and earned his doctorate at Sorbonne. He was a fine man and an Empire builder, having convinced many graduates over the years to emigrate to the colonies. We had old boys in Australia, New Zealand, Canada, India, and of course Africa. He developed the Modern on the basis of the regular public (private) schools with the students split up into four houses with housemasters, although it was not a boarding school. House colors were awarded in all the major sports, soccer, cricket, and swimming, and most of the competition was intra-mural. Junior and senior prefects did a lot of the marshalling and moving of the younger boys, and maintained order during recess. The school, if I remember correctly was started in 1854 and when I began attending, it was held in the rooms in the Albert Hall near where the Cookridge Street Baths are or were. I remember going into the building one morning as the German zeppelin (was it the Hindenburg?) sailed overhead on one of it's spy flights. In 1931, or early 1932, the new school at Lawnswood was finished, except for the grounds, and we moved in to it with glee. This change eliminated my trip down town and now I could cycle the two or three miles each day, winter and summer. The third year I was there, I joined the Boy Scout troop at the school ,6th N.W. Leeds transferring from the one on the Estate, 23rd N.W. Leeds troop. Uncle Geoff, as I eventually got to addressing Dr. Morton was a great believer in the Boy Scout and the Rotary movements, and officiated as Scoutmaster for many, many years. Each year he would organize camps and treks around the country and around the world, starting with a standing camp each year at Stratford on Avon for the thirteen year olds. This was always held on Sir Archibald Flower's estate, and of course, two Shakespeare plays were mandatory. For the fourteen year olds, a hike and camp were ordained, somewhere in the British Isles. For me that was Scotland in 1935 hiking across from Dingwall to Loch Torridon and back to Achnasheen to catch the train back to Inverness and home. Every two years, there were trips abroad, to the Swiss Alps, the Black Forest, and, four years apart, trips to Canada. I was lucky in that I was just the right age for the 1936 trek, 15 years old.. We sailed to New York on the Queen Mary on July 27th and that was the voyage where she broke the speed record for crossing the Atlantic and was awarded the Blue Riband for that feat. We stayed in New York for two days, and of course we all shook hands with Dr. James E. West, the Chief Scout of America. A night train through Vermont took us up to Montreal and from there, we split into two parties, one to take the train to Lac Tremblante and the other to take the train to Lachute, and hike the rest of the way to the lake. While at the lake we canoed and portaged across three more lakes to the Red River, and returned.When the other party arrived at Lac Tremblante, our party hiked back to Lachute, and caught the train to Montreal. We sailed from Montreal on one of the Empress boats, but the name escapes me at this time. Subsequently, after volunteering for the RAF on September 4, 1939, and being finally enlisted in August of 1940, I served just six years with two of those on the Gold coast, now Ghana. During that time I was on liaison with the Free French in what is now Central Africa. Before I went overseas, I was a member of 85 Squadron when the commanding officer was the then Squadron Leader Peter Townsend, who later became a Group Captain, equerry to King George VI, and was exiled for his attention to Princess Margaret.The objection being that he was a divorced man. I attended his first wedding at Much Hadham, a small village where my future wife's grandparents came from. After coming out of the RAF as a married man with one daughter, I worked on a couple of farms for two years, and then, with the Labor Government wanting to control us from the womb to the tomb decided to emigrate to Canada. In May 1941 the squadron moved to a brand new wartime base at Hunsdon, Hertfordshire. While there, two major things happened. I met the young lady who later became my wife, and I was posted overseas. While in Africa I kept up correspondence with Elsie, and after returning to the U.K. asked her to marry me and she agreed. We planned to be married on June 10, 1944, and, of course, D-Day, as you know was June 6. Because of this, my C.O. had to get special permission from Group 12 H.Q. for me to take a weeks leave,(I had saved up two weeks). We celebrated our 61st anniversary a couple of months ago After working on a farm for several months in Ontario, I applied for a position as an inspector at the AVRO plant near Toronto where they were building a jet passenger plane to compete with the De Havilland Comet. They beat us to a test flight by 10 days, and captured most of the then market for that type of plane.Not too long after that, a cousin of mine in Cincinnati planned to get married and we went down for that occasion. While there, a wealthy farmer offered to sponsor our emigration to the States, and we accepted.. A fortunate move in one way because a month after we left Canada, the AVRO plant closed on a three hour notice. and 3, 000 workers were laid off. Not too long after this, a national company opened a plant in the town we were living in, and after two months working there, I was appointed plant superintendent. An opportunity to take the position of office manager opened up a couple of years later and I was accepted. From there I went to other plants trouble shooting, and when a financier captured control of the company and proceeded to liquidate all 64 plants and warehouses, I traveled around the eastern part of the country, closing out various plants and shipping the machinery to a central storage area. Before I forget, we left England with two children, Patricia 3 years old and Jacqueline, five months old. Pat was born at my parents home where I had moved Elsie when the buzz bombs began falling in her area. As she was pregnant, there was no difficulty in her leaving an essential job that protected her from being drafted into the services. Jacqueline was born in the country, supervised by a midwife in a house with no electricity, no running water, and to which she had to cycle, at three in the morning four miles from her home in the nearest town called Swinefleet. We took with us four trunks, two suit cases, a baby carriage, two kids and a dog. The dog we had picked out of a litter in the first farm where I worked after the war. She was a Border Collie and we named her Bessie. She would rather hunt rats than eat and served as a useful watchdog as well. That was in 1946 when we got her and we lost her on Thanksgiving Day 1962 while we were living thirty miles south of Boston. Over the years, we have lived in Ohio, New York state, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Iowa, back to Minnesota, again to another town in Iowa, and finally back to Minnesota. In those year I have been an officer manager at three different plants, chief accountant for a $250,000,000.00 plywood corporation, plant representative for a plastics plant, and finally in the personnel department of an international company. Deciding on an early semi retirement, I bought a half interest in a canoe outfitters in northern Minnesota, but one summer convinced me that although it was a healthy and interesting occupation, it covered not much more than a third of the year. So I opened a tax and accounting service in a nearby town, ran that for several years, and decided to sell it and fully retire. That was fourteen years ago, and yet I still do all the corporation taxes for the people who now own it. Before buying into the canoe business, we had bought an abandoned farm in the same area as the canoe business, 127 acres with 3/4 mile on the river that was the main river for this particular canoe outfit, had a house built as far as the frame was concerned and finished it ourselves. This was fine until I began having inguinal hernia repairs. So far, I have had ten of those, five on each side, and the last annual physical I had, my doctor said that I still had double hernia. I will not try for a round dozen.Throw in a radical prostatectomy done at the Mayo Clinic in 1991, and you might think "Twas the schooner Hesperus that sailed the wintry seas" from that epic poem.I have slowed down a little, but what do you expect at 84. In the course of our travels, we had a daughter Barbara, born at the hospital in Brampton, Ontario (not to be confused with Brampton, Yorkshire where I was born) in 1949, and she was five months old when we moved down from Canada in 1950 - the same age Jacqueline was when we crossed the Atlantic in the old Aquitania, still fitted out as a troop ship, bunks three high in the lounge where the women slept, five to a cabin below decks where the men slept. A son Richard was born in Hamilton, Ohio, nearest hospital to where we lived at that time in 1951, and our fourth daughter, Elizabeth was born in Oneida, N.Y.We lost one in between due to the incompetence of our so called family doctor. Except for our stay in Canada, when I was too busy trying to establish a satisfactory way of life, and the spell in New York state, where I could never be sure from one week to the next where I would be, I have done something in Scouting at each place. This will be my 62nd year in Scouting, and I hold all of the volunteer awards in this country up to and including the Silver Beaver. Working on the district Eagle Scout Board of Review, and serving on the Council Executive Board have been my contributions over the last ten years. Serving a full nine years on the Area Library board of directors, and president of a non profit foundation that I incorporated to raise $2,000.000.00 in order to build a new library. The one we bought in 1994 is already too small for our growing community. I always regret that the trip to the U.K. in 1971 with our two youngest, Richard & Elizabeth, was marred by the fact that my long awaited reunion with Uncle Geoff was marred by the fact that he already was suffering from Alzheimer's and did not remember me. Although his son Anthony, was my buddy throughout our school years, and on the Canadian trek, we lost touch years ago. Before I forget, in an interview prior to leaving school, Uncle Geoff saw me as a silver fox farmer in northern Ontario. As far as location is concerned , he was not too far out because we originally wanted to settle in Nova Scotia, but were talked out of it by the Canadian Pacific representative whom I talked to in Liverpool before we left. As far as the Queen Mary was concerned, as a 15 year old, we were thrilled to be on board, loved the plush furnishings, even though we were only in third class, and do not recall too much about it. Sailing into the harbor at New York, we were all at lunch when the ship suddenly heeled over and then straightened up. What had happened was that a twin engined plane filled with newspapermen and photographers had flown too close behind us in the hot air from the funnels, and crashed into the sea. Later we heard that the coast guard signaled for us to go ahead as they would effect the rescue and that we should not lose time completing our record breaking voyage. Our trip to the U.K. in 1992 was quite different. We were shocked by the amount of traffic in the towns, cars parked on front lawns that had been concreted over for that purpose, the high cost of eating out, and the recognizable fact that there were many missing faces in our circle of friends and relations. With that in mind, we had made this our final fling, and flew from Minneapolis to Chicago, to London, drove 1,700 miles around England and Scotland, flew to Singapore, spent a day there, then on to Adelaide where Elsie's sister and one of her cousins had lived since the early '50's, on to Sydney, Los Angeles, Chicago and back to Minneapolis. I do not believe that I have lived my life according to what Uncle Geoff had prescribed, but at least I know that he would have been proud of our early efforts. Our move to the U.S. would not have pleased him, but he was a gentleman to the last, and never had any word of criticism. As usual, I have been verbose, and not too cohesive, but I hope that you can find a few kernels in my ramblings of interest to your readers. I might ask for your FAX number as I can probably Fax you one or two photographs rather than let them physically cross the ocean again. One of the photos shows all the group on the deck of the Queen Mary, and I will dig it out and list the names of the boys, masters and alumni just in case you choose to find out if there are any other survivors. Looking at the photograph taken on board the Queen Mary, I have to correct my previous thinking. There were twenty scouts in the party, three old boys, and Dr. M and two masters, and I am able to name all but two of the boys, and have a guess at those. Edric P.S. Should mention that my favorite beer over here is Threakston's "Old Peculier" brewed in Masham. John, In your e-mail to me dated August 15th, you mentioned that you had sent me a copy of the Y.E.P. by snail mail. Since the advent of e-mail, we have fondly or otherwise referred to the delivery of mail by the U.S.P.S as snail mail, and have reaccustomed ourselves to having the written word take four or five days to reach one from the outermost regions of this country, or even the next state. Now, the Royal Mail, or whatever the present bureaucrats prefer to call the collection and delivery of letters, would seem to have even our mail service look good. Of course, I did see a nature fact a couple of days ago that a snail can sleep for three years, so maybe there is hope yet. Unless of course it went via a slow boat to China. I have two letters to answer, one from somewhere in England, and the other "Old Boy" from Paris, and have been waiting to see what you wrote so that I could communicate with them on an even-steven basis. I also had a few more recollections to add to the original report, one of which involved a bunch of us innoculating a couple of dinner rolls with dog powder and arranging it so that a master we did not like ate them at the next meal. So far, I have not heard from any person that was on the Canadian trek, but then, one was lost in the fall opf Singapore, and another one tried to corner pork bellies or some other agricultural produce, failed miseranbly and committed suicide. He happened to be a good friend of mine but obviously much more speculative than I have ever been. Cheers, Edric