James Christopher Minnis (1938-1942)
Died on 28th August 2020 aged 97
Jim, my uncle, was born on 21 January 1923 in Northwood, the second of five children. He started at Taylors’ in 1938 following his elder brother Bruce. His time at the school was uneventful apart from a rumour that he was involved in ‘hoisting’ a chamber pot up the flagpole much to the annoyance of the headmaster, Norman Birley.
He left in 1942 and enlisted in the naval voluntary reserve where, as Lieutenant Minnis, he commanded a landing craft on D-Day and for four months afterwards, crossing and re-crossing the channel supplying the allied forces.
He was demobbed in 1946 and went to Oxford University where he read Modern Languages. In 1950 he took up a post as Translator for the Allied Repatriation Project in Vienna from 1950-51. It was here that he met his future wife, Hermina, and they married in 1951 in Austria.
They returned to England where Jim followed a career in teaching; first at an approved school in Ely, then to Petersfield College and finally in 1960 as Head of Modern Languages at Guildford Technical College until his retirement in 1983.
Richard Burt (1962-1968)