Milla Joy Boodnikoff - but not an Aiglon alumni?

To the right is a picture of Milla Joy Boodnikoff, born 18th Feb. 2008 - not even two weeks old by the date of this blog post. She is not an Aiglon alumni.
Why then, is her picture here? Well, it's because her grandfather, my old Alpina room-mate, Chris Simmons, seems to be over the moon about her. As he wrote to me on Feb. 25th.:

• "We became grandparents during the week. Our eldest daughter Emily produced a beautiful baby girl, Milla Joy, last Monday. She is a treasure!! Everyone is fit and well. WOW what a week!!"

Summary details are:

• Milla Joy Boodnikoff, born Cairns Private Hospital 18th Feb. 2008, 3630 grams (8lbs) and 53 cms in length.
• Milla's mother is Chris Simmons' daughter, Emily (24 yrs) and her father is Gary Boodnikoff (29 yrs). (Gary is a professional basketballer with the NBL franchise Cairns Taipans.)
• Mother and baby are doing very well.

Since this beautiful child is the first alumni grandchild birth to be announced on this blog, I would suggest we could consider marking the occasion in some way. Any ideas? (Click on "Comments" below to make suggestions or discuss this.)

Posted on behalf of Chris Simmons ('67).

John Corlette and Round Square

"John Corlette of Aiglon...
"...was our most powerful personality and he was the only one to own his own school. He was urging expansion and development long before I felt we were ready for it. He insisted that there must be an association journal but it was not until 1982 that the enthusiasm and driving energy of Margaret Sittler got “Echo” going. John was an original and this showed itself in his creation Aiglon and its most characteristic custom: the morning Meditation. He collected art and had a weakness for Jaguars (petrol driven). He was a master of publicity and used this much to the benefit of his school. During the first American conference at Athenian in 1972, Aiglon gave a reception in San Francisco and a very fine film of the school was shown with a commentary by the best of the B.B.C. announcers. It began with the camera swinging through the arc of mountains between Aiguille Verte and the Dent du Midi. Then it swept down into the Rhone valley and one saw the distant road zigzagging up towards Villars. A small object driving up the road grew into a familiar streamline shape and the voice of the B.B.C. chimed in: “John Corlette had a dream”. There was a chortle of joy from the assembled Heads, which John took in good part."

Extract from THE MUSCLES OF FRIENDSHIP
Valedictory Speech by Jocelin Winthrop Young, Founding Director of Round Square
On the occasion of his retirement
October 1992
At Bishop’s College School, Lennoxville, Quebec, Canada.

What made Aiglon so special for you ?

Iain is right about the students making Aiglon such an extraordinary school. I count several Aiglonians to be among my closest friends. We are all in different parts of the world and in different professions and yet we have this extraordinary bond which was formed in Villars. I also think there were some incredibly talented teachers who challenged us both in and out of the classroom. Derek Berry's economics "A" level course taught from DB's marxist perspective was a great learning experience for me. I suppose the teachers were all handpicked by JC ?
Noel Thompson.

Do you know where these alumni are now? #1

I am trying to track down these alumni:

1. Bill Sturges - [2008/03/26 - now made contact].
2. Charles Ainley - no current whereabouts.
   
3. Duncan Maxwell - [2008/03/15 - Michael Karakashian has provided a current email address for him. I shall try to contact him there].
   
4. Ed Pollard - no current whereabouts; rumoured to "Not do email".
5. John Freeman - no current whereabouts.
   
6. Randy Tucker - no current whereabouts.
   

Do you have contact details for any of them?

Aiglon, alumni and related photos

Your photos + my photos = our photos. From New Zealand to you. I have collected together a general collection of "Aiglon" photos, and put it onto this blog (see the RHS column). It includes:

• some beautiful pix taken in 2004 of Aiglon, Villars and environs (and the mountains) - courtesy of Louis Snyder.
  
  
• some pix of alumni and staff from past and present - e.g., the Aiglon 1966(?) Tennis Team, Jonathan Harrison on a speedboat, Noel Thompson's mugshot from his Facebook entry, Bibi and Philip Parsons, some John Corlette pix, and Todd Barbey at his 25th wedding anniversary.

If you would like to include any more pix in this album, please send them to me and I shall update it. Alternatively, there is nothing stopping you - as a blog author - from putting your own album up, if you would prefer.
The album is here, and you can also see the album thumbnail pictures in the RHS column of this page.

The Aiglon 1966 1st football team

(Photo courtesy of Patrick Roberts.)

A fine body of men, as I'm sure you would agree.
From L to R:
Back row:.......................Front row:
1. Alex Maclachlan...............1. Charles Calvert
2. Howard Hodgson.............2. Colin MacVeagh
3. Martin Yates....................3. Reid Schoenfeld
4. Jeff Nelson.......................4. Charles Ainley
5. Peter Wordsworth............5. Roland Karakashian (deceased)
6. Iain Barraclough
7. Harold Summers
8. Chris Powell

Sarah's wedding (Nov. 2007)

After George v Winternitz had done us proud with a couple of his photos of his son's wedding, I thought you might be interested in some shots of my daughter's wedding (November 2007).
I have put them up in a Picasa photo album here. They are also shown in the RHS column on this blog page.

My mate Harold Summers and I

Harold was a mate at school and a good friend when I later lived in London. He and I had a long chat on Skype a few weeks back.
He subsequently emailed me his "before and after" (shaving) photos - the top two pictures on the right.

Below those, for comparison, there's a picture of me (Iain B) with Harold S, clipped from a 1966 school football team photo (Harold is on the RHS), and a more recent pic of me smiling.