REPORT FROM
BATTERSEA OLD NOTRE DAMIANS
We are
still managing to keep two meetings going a year for Battersea
in spite of losing the facilities offered for a long time at St.
Mary’s RC in Battersea. The meeting in October for any Old
Notre Damian at Edge Hill still goes on. For the AGM meeting in
April / May we tried the Sacred Heart Church for three years.
However, very low number of one member and four committee
members the last time we held it there caused a ‘rethink’,
especially since the member could not attend anymore due to
physical frailty, an increasing problem with members.
This
year, Mary Meads, our Finance officer, managed to persuade the
Parish Priest of Our lady of Mount Carmel and St Joseph,
opposite our old school, to allow us to use a room in the
priest’s house for the AGM, to be held in May.
A few
years ago, Mary Meads and I joined a group of old girls from
Southwark Notre Dame on a trip to Namur. We admired the plaques
in the chapel at the St Julie Billiart Centre and decided there
had to be one for B.O.N.D.
The
sister of one of our members, Barbara Frawley, now deceased, had
bequeathed the sum of £2,000 to us. We decided that this would
be an excellent use for some of it and would commemorate the
gift in a positive way.
Mary set
about contacting someone at Namur to get the name and number of
the sculptor used by Southwark. With a smattering of French from
here and English from France Mary managed to explain our needs,
After some discussion at the next reunion we decided on wording
for the plaque. We wanted to include St Mary’s, the primary
school run by the sisters of the Notre Dame Battersea Convent,
which many of us attended and got their permission to do so.
A group
of us, five or six, will go to Namur this year to see the plaque
put up on the wall of the chapel and celebrate it with a mass in
honour of all past pupils.
Our
thanks to you for all the work you do on behalf on the
Federation. Unfortunately, with Facebook and Friends Reunited,
many past pupils from a school that has closed choose to have
their own reunions. B.O.N.D. will continue as long as possible.
God Bless you all,
Mary Davey (President)
