Christmas Term 2022 OB Newsletter

Principal A message from the

It is lovely to be able to update you at the end of another fabulous Christmas term at St Jo’s.

As ever, it has been wonderful to welcome back our alumni to share their experiences, successes and wisdom with our current students. Your words have much impact and many times, either strike a chord or provide a lightbulb moment for our young people, as they are in the process of making significant decisions about their higher education and careers.

Old Birkfeldians were superbly represented both in person and online at our 36th annual Rugby Festival in October. Your presence, warmth and enthusiasm for this event knows no bounds and sets the scene for current students and families for the future –thank you for your loyalty and support.

We often reflect on the way in which the College has grown and evolved over the years. One article in this Newsletter highlights particularly how pastoral support and academic achievement have progressed significantly over the years but also

that the ethos of strong and lasting relationships across the generations do remain a hallmark of a St Joseph’s College student. (Please see page 8.)

We are feeling thoroughly festive as I write, with carol services, nativities, Christmas parties/ lunches/jumpers, panto trips and discos aplenty! For more detail on the College, its events and students please see here for our latest College Newsletter and here for links to our social media.

I wish you and your loved ones a joyful and blessed Christmas and a happy and healthy New Year.

Mrs Danielle Clarke Principal

A Place of Fun, Challenge and Reflection

A quick race around some of the faculties and departments will give a snapshot of life at St Joseph’s College this past term. In the Prep School our Eco Committee has been celebrating the award of an Eco-Schools Green Flag, marking the children’s dedication to a greener, more sustainable way of doing things.

Everyone has been celebrating the joy on the faces of the children in Ghana who have received donated St Jo’s sports kit. We are thrilled that the redundant but still serviceable kit is getting a new lease of life. Our UK heritage has been explored, too: everything from Scottish shortbread and Suffolk punches to Welsh dragons and English country dancing. Thank you to the visiting grandparents who ‘stripped the willow’ with such abandon!

Our senior boys and girls have celebrated languages around the world – and tried out their Spanish with the aid of some games familiar to our short-term Spanish boarders. A lucky few were able to take early steps in German, too, when they visited Cologne. It was the landscape rather than the language of Iceland that was centre stage for the GCSE and

A-level Geography trip, while our historians explored First World War battlefields and settings in Belgium. Extraordinary and customary events have been marked, including the death of Queen Elizabeth II, Harvest Festival, and our annual Remembrance Service. Our mathematicians old and young have been racking their brains over internal and external competitions, with the house events designed to cater for all levels of ability. Four high flying A-level mathematicians achieved Merits in the UKMT Senior Kangaroo, placing them in the top 2% of those selected to take part nationally.

An autumn musical showcase and rehearsals for our coming musical, Fame, have kept our toes tapping and workshops run by the West End artistes of Arts International have given drama a huge boost. Finally, don’t worry about Sport being neglected! The College has resounded to matches being played and skills being honed from early morning sessions, through games lessons, lunchtime and development hour clubs and Saturday training.

Festival

Festival Showcases Amazing Sporting Potential

St Joseph’s College celebrated its 36th National Schools Rugby Festival, with 15 top rugby-playing schools from around the UK competing, including Millfield, who retained the title. Thousands turned out to watch the matches and supported the Festival online. Talent scouts from Premiership Academy and Wales RFU were in attendance.

Several St Joseph’s College alumni who have gone on to make names for themselves in the world of professional rugby returned to lend support, including Lewis Ludlam, Luc Jeannot and George Wacokecoke. Former England players Martin Corry MBE and Alex King were also in attendance.

Luc Jeannot, Coventry and Northampton Saints, recalled taking part in the Festival as a student here: ‘I came to St Jo’s a little bit late - at the start of Sixth Form - but when I got here, it was amazing how much emphasis there was on the Festival. You could tell that for everyone, from the boys in Year 7 upwards, it was everything they wanted to do when they got to the end of their time at St Joseph’s.

‘It

Mr O’Riordan, Director of Sport and Business Development, said, ‘The talent on display never

ceases to amaze me… It takes my breath away when, the following year, you see some of the student athletes playing for premiership and championship rugby teams on the television.

‘It is humbling and inspiring to think that Ipswich and St Joseph’s College has played a part in that person’s journey into top-flight professional sport. We are immensely proud not only of our student athletes who represent the College over that two-day period, but also of the part we play in helping develop and prepare rugby players of the future.’

Old Birkfeldian Games

The OB Friday night pre-Festival rugby was played between relatively recent leavers on the whole; the oldest players had left just three years ago. It was an exciting game played in good spirits and with some very robust tackles being made. The match was superbly refereed by our own Mr Dixon. The slightly older team, captained by former Head Boy Bertie Kemsley, won against Cian Rothwell’s younger squad: 5 tries to 2 (29-10).

Our current Netball 1st team proved too strong for their alumnae opposition and won 40-28. Both sides played well. Thank you to all participants and to the very large crowd of supporters who turned out to watch.

was the pinnacle of what you could achieve. I was really lucky to be a part of that.’

Keelan Waldock A Bwownies Story

‘It was literally here I started Bwownies,‘ entrepreneur Keelan Waldock OB told a packed Sixth Form centre. ‘It seems yesterday I was coming in here and putting brownies in that fridge over there. It’s been a pretty amazing journey. My aim is to have the best brownie business in the world.’

In terms of a lifetime, it is ‘only yesterday’. Keelan is still just 22-years-old, but he has crammed in the learning, ramped up his social media presence, ticked off the business milestones and shown brilliant strategy for broadening his contact list in those short years.

Passionate is an overused word, but Keelan is passionate about Bwownies, about taking business risks and making money whilst young and unencumbered by mortgage and other responsibilities.

He is responsible though! In the earliest days, he stuck at his job at McDonald’s dreaming of the moment his Mum would be convinced of Bwownies’ longevity and give him the go-ahead to quit. He plugged away at university, curtailing the amount he went out. He got up ‘super early’ to cook brownies, followed by four hours academic study then back to the kitchen of his shared house in Exeter to cook again.

Orders always had to be fulfilled and housemates were kept sweet with a continuous supply of offcuts. The business flourished and Keelan obtained his 2:1.

However driven he may be when it comes to business, Keelan’s pleasant nature is undoubtedly one of his greatest assets. Throughout his talk to current A-level students and those, like him, who chose the vocational route of BTECs and CTECs, he

referred to the people who mean the most to him, principally his family.

He credited his Mum’s role in his success – allowing him to add his ingredients to the bottom of her shopping list. And his Nan, with whom he was travelling back from a cricket match when he came up with the stupendous name, Bwownies.

He mentioned his Dad, a plumber, referencing for the Sixth Formers his own very ordinary background. But on social media – the epicentre of the Bwownies brand – he paid this Father’s Day tribute:

You are my biggest role model. You built something from nothing and that is what I am trying to do. Thank you for inspiring me and teaching me so many valuable lessons. Back when I was doing work experience with you, who would have thought I would be running a business 6 years later! Crazy!!! Sorry I didn’t go into plumbing making BWOWNIES was more up my street lol, I hope I can give my future family everything you gave to me’

Keelan’s only condemnation, and it was more in the nature of bemused disappointment than of anger, was with friends who created a fake account and wrote bad reviews. ‘They thought it was funny. I didn’t.’

He has enormous confidence in his product and he is incredibly determined. He obtained a five-star hygiene rating for the kitchen at the Exeter house, the lease for which precluded running a business! Twice he has canvassed every catering company in an area to find commercial premises – once in the South West and now around Sudbury as he has returned to the area.

Communication is key for him. Emails, of course, but also letters – he takes the time to win over those he is seeking to bring on board. He is ingenious in getting through to the right people: those on the cusp of becoming influencers but before representation shields them from unsolicited messages.

His contacts include a personal hero, entrepreneur, BBC Dragon and podcaster (‘The Diary of a CEO’), Steven Bartlett. On a Centre Parcs break for his brother’s birthday – again the family reference – Keelan worked out how to reach Bartlett: a video, a tagging request and all of a sudden Bwownie fliers were included in VIP goody bags at a Steve Bartlett talk.

Keelan’s gambits don’t always pay off. One ruse involving Companies House enabled him to send brownies to Tyson Fury and Tesla etc - always with a letter included. He was thrilled to receive an email from Tesla. But it wasn’t Elon Musk; it was Tesla UK Ltd, which sells plumbing parts!

Even when an approach falls short of the target, it can prove useful. ‘I realised I should do something for April Fools’ Day. I made a sick image of a Bwownie McFlurry. It went viral and that helped a lot. The new owner of Ipswich Town messaged me. He was so proud of me. I just couldn’t tell him it was a joke… We ended up in a Zoom call and I confessed. I’m hoping to do something with ITFC soon.’

Bwownies is an online business though Keelan has plans to expand into B2B. It has 10.8k followers in Instagram. This Black Friday it aimed to sell 500 boxes. (Half as many as it had sold in the previous 12 months.) The 500 were sold in first 10 hours – 840 over the weekend.

‘I was making money while I was sitting in your seat. Sixteen to 30. That’s when you should take the biggest risks. Starting a business, making money, that’s something to put on your UCAS application. I was not academic, I didn’t do A-levels. I played cricket and I worked at McDonald’s I genuinely believe Bwownies is why I got into university.’

‘You can be the best person on social media, in marketing and in sales but if your product is terrible you’re not going to make it. Luckily for me, I believed my product was the best out there and other people agree with me!’

‘I set up my business here in the Sixth Form and St Jo’s encouraged me.’

Enduring Friendship

10 years ago. I had not seen Wasyl since I left the school in the summer of 1972, exactly 50 years ago!

We did not spend the evening discussing our careers. Not once did Dave mention his role as a top medical scientist. Wasyl’s distinguished career as a psychologist was hardly mentioned. And I was not asked for one interesting anecdote from my 46 years as a cab driver. No, our conversation was dominated by an interest in each other’s families. Though, of course, Dave, Wasyl and I did recall our school days at St Jo’s and it was very interesting to hear Wasyl’s comments about the O-level results for our year (which I just happened to have with me!) from 1972.

John Winlow OB recalls a very different St Joseph’s, albeit with the same capacity for rebuilding enduring friendships.

On 10 June this year, three Old Birkfeldians and their wives met for drinks and a meal at the house of former head boy David Stuart-Thompson and his wife, Rosie, in Stutton, near Ipswich. Also there was a former classmate of mine, Wasyl Nimenko, and his wife, Chrisie, and my wife, Nicky.

David, or Dave, was in the year ahead of Wasyl and myself at St Jo’s. I remembered his name from those days but our paths never crossed. You see, he was captain of the rugby and cricket teams and if there had been a captain of the skiving team, that would have been me! Dave did very well at school, went on to university and became a top biomedical scientist. Wasyl, similarly, did very well in his O-levels and A-levels, studied at university and became an eminent psychologist and has written many self-help books. I left St Jo’s with just one O-level and I have been a cab driver for 46 years.

I had already met with Dave and Rosie several times since a chance conversation with his son, an architect, at the school a few years ago which led to us having our first meet-up at the King’s Head in Stutton, Dave and Rosie’s second home! Since then, my wife Nicky and I have had several lovely meals with them. Dave and Wasyl have been firm friends since meeting up at Bury St Edmunds Hospital about

I thought at the time, and for many years, that I was the only boy in the history of St Jo’s to leave with just one O-level. But, on discovering the results in the 1972 end-of-year school magazine at an Old Birkfeldians event about eight years ago, I was relieved to find that in that year alone, there were 14 boys, including myself, who only managed to gain one O-level, out of a total of 71. That’s just under 20%, a surprising and not insignificant number of boys.

For every one of those boys and his family, it would have been very disappointing, to say the least. There would have been recriminations and I’m sure some heated discussions. The boys who did well would have received the recognition and congratulations of the teachers and their families. But for those who did not do well, there was a sense of shame, guilt and failure. And our futures did not look bright. Each one of those boys had his own, genuine reasons for not doing well.

So, at results time of year, please spare a thought for those who, like me, leave St Jo’s with just one or two O-levels or GCSE passes. Not because they are lazy or do not care about their futures but because, for whatever reason, they lose their way at a crucial time or, like me, develop severe mental health problems that they can neither articulate nor share with others.

The successful students, quite rightly, receive recognition and praise from teachers, families and friends for their efforts, results and success. But those students who are not successful at this stage need the help and understanding of those around them to get back on track and try to make sure they make the most of the talents they have. Apart from my dear mother, there was no one else to help and support me through that very difficult period.

Old Boys, left to right : Dave, John and Wasyl

I sincerely hope that Dave, Wasyl and I, and our wives, will be able to meet up regularly in the future, for there is no better way to spend an evening than in the company of good friends, recalling shared memories, talking about our families, discussing our present situations and our plans for the future, always accompanied by good food and free flowing wine, of course.

A response from St Joseph’s College Principal, Mrs Clarke

Whilst the camaraderie and networking highlighted in John’s article are still hallmarks of the school, much has changed beyond recognition over the intervening half century. The College does not select on academic ability to the extent of some other schools, instead recognising that individual students learn in different ways and at different paces. We continue to celebrate our academic high-fliers, assisting their paths to top universities and prestigious careers, but for decades now our attention and support have equally been focused on those of average talents and abilities, seeing brilliance and potential in all our students.

For those who struggle with academia or begin to falter at any particular stage, we have planned programmes of support. Pastoral intervention and help are pivotal and well-resourced, with plentiful and kind specialist staff. On examination results days we outstrip national averages, but always recognise that the GCSE Grade 4/A-level Grade C achieved by dint of hard work and burgeoning self-belief is as much to be celebrated as the expected Grade 9/A* achieved by the ablest students. Our unwavering aim is for no child to be left behind. An obituary for Fr John Prior OB, which was

Father John Prior Obituary

written by his sister, Mary, and was published in The Guardian, in July 2022

My brother John Prior, who has died aged 75, trained as a Roman Catholic priest in the UK before spending most of his life on the island of Flores in Indonesia, working within parishes, then as an academic theologian, and always as a man passionate about social justice.

John was born in Ipswich, one of the six children of Vincent Prior, a printing compositor, and Kathleen (nee Mansford), a hairdresser. He went to the Roman Catholic St Joseph’s College school in Ipswich and by his early teens had already decided that the priesthood should be his vocation, after one Sunday at mass he heard a talk by a visiting priest from the Society of the Divine Word (SVD).

Once he left school John joined the SVD, studying with them in Ireland and London before being ordained in 1972. The SVD being a missionary order, he was sent in 1973 to Indonesia, which has a large Roman Catholic population, and worked there, on Flores, as assistant priest in the parish of St Thomas More in Maumere, and as priest in the parish of Our Lady of Mount Carmel in Wolofeo.

In 1984 John came back to the UK to become a doctoral student at Birmingham University, obtaining his PhD in intercultural theology in 1987. Returning to Flores, he then became a lecturer on the postgraduate programme at the island’s St Paul’s Institute of Philosophy and a researcher at the Candraditya Research Centre in Maumere.

The years after 1987 saw John become a wellrespected academic in his fields of interest, which included missiology, the study of religious missions and their methods and purposes. He wrote widely on such topics, mostly in Indonesian and under the name John Mansford Prior, and was on the editorial boards of several theological journals.

In parallel with his academic career, John never lost touch with the primary purpose of his mission, which was to serve the poorest and most marginalised people in society. He devoted much of his time to helping a group of HIV positive people in Maumere and to prisoners in the local jail. He was still living in Flores at his death.

Simple, upright and courageous, he was a caring son, brother, uncle and great-uncle, with an excellent sense of humour and a habit of giving way to infectious giggling.

He is survived by three of his siblings, Tony, Anselm and me, four nephews and nieces, and five greatnephews and nieces.

Following his ordination, John returned to St Joseph’s College to say mass in the Chapel.

Familiar Landmarks, Familiar Faces?

Old Birkfeldian John Henry joined Oak Hill, then our preparatory school, in September 1948 and progressed to the senior department at Birkfield, leaving the Upper Sixth in May 1959. Here are a few of his wonderful collection of photographs and he appears in every one. Mr Henry is most clearly seen as the Cub (23rd Ipswich pack) with the toothbrush.

Do any of our readers also recognise themselves? St Joseph’s loves to receive photos like these!

How very nice to see you

We’re an amiable place and love to welcome visitors –both old friends and new.

Professor Thomas Hennessey of Canterbury Christ Church University, spoke to the Sixth Form about university courses and lectured on the birth of modern British Intelligence. Another inspirational speaker was author Lauren North, who writes psychological suspense novels. OB Dom Godfrey spoke to a large audience of students who have expressed an interest in the Army or other Armed Services. Although currently recuperating from an injury, Dom can’t wait to get back to his friends in the next exotic location.

It was terrific, too, to welcome back Joel Sou OB, currently studying for his Masters in Psychotherapy at the University of Saint Joseph in Macau, and Jerran Zhou OB, a second-year student of Nutrition at Leeds. Both caught up with old friends from Boarding and among the staff. It’s a particularly busy time for Joel, who along with his academic studies, is also finding time to learn the trade at his father’s architecture firm.

Two Score Years and Counting

Two stalwarts of the St Joseph’s College community have each celebrated 20 years’ service this term.

There were flowers and presents for Senior Science Technician, Mrs Turner, and College Nurse, Mrs Debenham. Both are familiar to many hundreds of students and staff colleagues through ‘doing their day job’ in the Science block and the medical room, but both have other valuable strings to their bows.

Mrs Turner has always thrown herself into College activities, ranging from trips, musicals, and fashion shows to the Rugby Festival, Aerobathon and CCF. While Mrs Debenham has been a cool and constant reassuring presence for all. Beyond her nursing remit, she is St Jo’s First Aid instructor and organises our equestrian team.

Thank you, ladies!