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Request for Information |
This letter was emailed to all the Old Centaurs I could find on the internet over the weekend of February 12/13th, 2005. Anyone may yet respond to this.
Dear Old Centaur,
DERBY CENTRAL SCHOOL INTERNET PROJECT
Please forgive the formality of a general letter from one Old Centaur to all the other Old Centaurs I can find on the internet.
Like me you will have a great fondness for those days when the mansion sat resplendent over the vista of Darley Park, or the earlier days of the more forbidding red brick edifice of Abbey Street School.
I know that Old Centaurs meet and gossip in Derby every month – keeping the dream alive. But there is almost nothing available on the internet to commemorate those times of comradeship. So I have set off on a venture to do something about that and would love your help.
Take a visit to www.mbuss.com/central.htm and you will see what I have accumulated to date. This is still very much my view and my memories – but I would like these to be lost in a welter of other recollections and pictures from other Old Centaurs.
HOW CAN YOU HELP?
- Send me your written reflections and recollections about all and anything that comes to mind relating to your time at Derby Central School: personal, historical, anecdotal, factual.
- Send me copies of photos, documents (like school reports, magazines, etc.). Explain them a fully as you can. I especially want a good pictures of the old Darley school building as they used to be. And Abbey Street.
- See if you can identify students and staff from the photos already posted on my site, and let me know who they are.
- Write what you know about the history of the school, especially when it began, when it was located at Abbey Street and when and why it moved to Darley Park.
- Write about the staff, especially the headmasters. I can compile ‘biographies’.
- If you have other memorabilia, try to scan them or photograph them and send to me. I will find a place for all of it.
- Either print and pass this letter on to other Old Centaurs you know who are not on the internet, or forward this email.
- Suggest any other sources I might tap. (I am in touch with Brian Skeldon who is a sort of database conservator for Old Boys. I also have contact with Derek Jones and Roger Finney.)
- Suggest other themes I might address on the website.
That’s it! We are an ever diminishing band. But I believe that the internet is a wonderful way to make the things that mattered so much to us available to our children and grandchildren. PLEASE try to share in this project as fully as possible. And Thank You – in anticipation!
Michael Buss (1953/58)
busstop9@adelphia.net
2402 Olive Lane, Santa Ana, California 92706, USA
Tel: (714) 547-2884
Celer et Certus!