The '69 Club' Yearbook

Alan Craxford Site Administrator

It is with great pleasure that I am opening this colour section dedicated to my classmates who attended medical school at St Andrews and Dundee, Scotland, and who, like me graduated in 1969. The nub of the idea crystallised out of my family history interests which have generated the articles and database behind the rest of this website. I had already written a trio of articles about my own pre-history a couple of years ago (the last three features on THE LEICESTER CRAXFORDS page) and I felt with the passing of the years, the time was right to document the dawn of my majority and adult activities. Initially the project was to be no more than a triptych charting my college experiences, the years in training and finally my ultimate practice.

Were we ever that young?

My first disincentive was an almost absolute lack of photographic or documentary evidence stretching back through the mists of time. Very few of us owned cameras in those days and my copy of the yearbook (a fondly remembered resource) had met with an early and untimely demise soon after graduation. Truth to tell, I had not ventured that far north of the border for 38 years and, so remiss of me, I had also lost touch with the year club. A colleague who lives nearby came up with a rather grainy picture, taken in 1966, of our Hall of Residence Group and Doug Reid kindly posted me his Yearbook all the way from Canada. My ambitions were still very limited but the sight of that book coupled with a planned reunion in St Andrews in 2009 led me to widen my horizons and attempt to create an electronic “’69 Club Yearbook” on line and document the memories and achievements of the whole class “forty years on”!

The Extended Craxford Family website and the software behind it is the ideal medium with which to produce such a volume. It is based on a genealogical package and in many respects we are one large family. The website has been running for three years and I am fairly confident of its security capabilities. It shares with other genealogy programmes the ability to mask the identities of “the living”. For this reason, the membership has been conceived as a family tree and you will need to obtain a login account to see the full collection. It also means that I do not have to obtain a separate domain address or web hosting package to develop and maintain it although in time, if the demand is there, it could be split off as a standalone website (with the financial implications that involves). I am able to trial different ideas in the main database before moving the working model into the Yearbook area. I am building the magazine with the intention of complementing, and not duplicating, the Yearclub forum which Neil Freshwater maintains.

So, what am I asking of you, my fellow members? Well, any project of this potential magnitude depends on the interest and involvement of everyone. Initially I will be asking you all for three things:

• A “potted” cv
• Your recollections of your time at university
• An article of your activities and of what you have been doing since then
  

"Sly Puss O'Coyne" Rag tags from the '60s

As far as your personal details are concerned, this can be as sketchy or as detailed as you wish to make them - and they can be easily added to later. It would be very useful to be able to chart the places you have lived or worked over the years. The package has a Google mapping facility built in which can trace out your own life map, linking photographs to places along the way. There is a demonstration of this on my own personal page. Although I would not want to get too involved in further individual research here, this is a family history website. So if you did decide that you wanted to start or develop your own family tree with all that retirement spare time just around the corner, you are welcome to add details of your grandparents, children etc and you would be able to download this as a genealogy standard GEDCOM file into your own programme. I'd be happy to help with that. (There is a guide to family history research elsewhere on the site: THIS IS MY CRACK COCAINE) I will post a specimen form on the site in due course.

The idea of the articles is that together they will provide a patchwork of experiences of University life in the 1960s which should become a fascinating and valuable social and historical volume. So please start scratching your memories, racking your brains, raking through your old photographs and committing thoughts and anecdotes to paper.

PAGE 2: REUNIONS

Accounts and photographs of previous events starting with the reunion in Kinsale, 2007.

PAGE 3: LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

Your chance to send your thoughts and comments about items which have appeared on these pages

PAGE 4: HELP WANTED

Ways of adding additional information to individual's pages; members articles and photographs: all needed if the concept of the "Yearbook 40 years on" is to be ready by the time of the reunion in 2009.

PAGE 5: ALUMNI ON-LINE

The University of Dundee is keen to welcome any members of the graduating Class of 69 to its alumni community, particularly because such a large part of their medical education took place in Dundee.

ST ANDREWS REUNION 2009 ANNOUNCED (Added October 14th 2007) Ken and Fiona Freshwater have announced the arrangements for the 40th anniversary reunion which will be held at the Old Course Hotel, St Andrews over the weekend of November 6th-8th 2009. Full details can be found on the 1969medics Group forum.

CLASS MEMBERS: Please register for a user account
Click the link in the left navigation bar which leads to the registration form. This is equipped with a security facility ("captcha") which I trust is not too inconvenient. Also add enough basic information so that admin can recognise you.
Alternatively send me an email and I'll do it for you!
REGISTERED TO DATE: 26       "Life Maps" activated: 5

In place

That tie! Spotted at Kinsale

The Year Club magazine will continue to evolve over the months to come. The "Class of 69" tree currently holds a skeleton of every member of the class. The database can be searched by surname and by place name from the links in the upper area of the left navigation bar. The Year Book has been scanned as double page spreads. Pages can be looked at individually - each page provides links to the personal pages of the three members concerned. It can also be viewed as a gallery by loading (preferably the front page) and then activating the slide show.

Thumbprint photographs from the yearbook are being added to each member's page. These are being supplemented by up to date photographs - many of which were taken at the reunion in Kinsale. If I missed anyone, I would be grateful for a recent photograph to help complete the collection. You can see these recent results by going to the "Album" link and choosing the "Class69" album. We will also be adding various photographs from the past and the first of these, including some memories of hall, are grouped together in "Gallery 1".

The "Feature Article" links will lead to members' articles and other items of interest. I will be looking to research the archives in Dundee for photographs and other background material.

Please feel free to explore the photographs and items to date and also have a look at the other sections of the website. I will always value your comments and contributions. Hopefully together we will have comprehensive and worthwhile volume by the time we all meet again in St Andrews in two years time.

Set up and moderated by Neil Freshwater on Yahoo, the 1969medics Group provides a forum, notice board and communication point for registered class members. There are facilities for uploading photographs and other files, conducting polls. making announcements and sending emails.

This is the place for keeping in touch.

If you have any contributions, questions or comments about the information on this site, please contact us at alancrax@aol.com. We look forward to hearing from you.

Newfloridian - October 2007
Updated: March 14th 2008