President’s Welcome

May I firstly say how pleased I am to welcome you to the spring issue of the magazine in my first official capacity as President. I left the school in 2002 to study Dentistry at Birmingham University and returned to the North East in 2008: the same year former President, David Westwood (95-02), Vice President, Chris Wilson (97-02) and I joined the ONA committee. We initially hoped to expand the merchandise range to include rugby shirts and cufflinks! Not being satisfied with that alone I am delighted the committee saw fit to let us take the reins at our relatively young age. We also welcome the promotion of Kate Jarvis (02-04) alongside Chris as Vice President.

I was delighted to assume the mantle from outgoing President David and would like to take this opportunity to thank him and the committee for all their hard work over the last two years growing the Association from strength to strength. I look forward to working more closely with development manager, Jane Medcalf and the Headmaster, Bernard Trafford as well as essential support and advice from David and the other committee members.

David has been a wonderful representative for us, extremely active in promoting the Association and has given me a great platform to start from. His presidency concluded with the oversubscribed 89th ONA Dinner of 160 guests at the school in October. The dinner saw the 25th, 30th, and 60th reunions in addition to Bill Elliott’s (52-88) A Level Applied Mechanics group as well as highly entertaining speeches from the Headmaster and Tony Boullemier (57-64). As usual, a great night was had by all and the already high standards of the catering team led by Barrie Bulch seem to improve year on year. A far cry from the days of queuing in the rain with your lunch pass!

We now look forward to 2015 starting with the London ONA Dinner hosted for the first time ever at the The East India Club on 6 March. This event proves more popular each year with people travelling some distances as well as London-based ONs and is a great evening to catch up with old friends, and make some new ones too. I look forward to meeting you there.

Enjoy the magazine!

Chris Rutter (92-02) ONA President