They were a varied group from a wide variety of backgrounds, ages and schools. Three were from public schools and the rest from grammar schools. None were from comprehensives because there were none when they started their secondary education. Their ages ranged from 17 to 20; some confident, some apprehensive and all naïve about university life.
The eight lads were Derek Anthony (Geography), Bob Armstrong (Chemistry), Chris Akhurst (English), Les Atkinson (Industrial Economics), Julian Atkinson (Chemistry), Peter Baldwin (Industrial Economics), Dave Crapper (Botany), Mike Hopkin (Industrial Economics) and Terry Baines (Chemistry). Serendipity or more specifically alphabetic grouping, threw us all together. Thus our friendships began.
The Class of '63 is formed
All but one of us graduated in 1963, (Dave had elected to do an intermediate year before starting his full degree), and after graduation we went our separate ways, all into employment. (At that time employment automatically followed graduation, such were the times.) We didn’t immediately coalesce into a post-graduate group; some of us kept in touch with one or two others, some we lost contact with altogether.
In 2003 Alumni Relations organised a forty year reunion for the class of '63. This was, with hindsight, the catalyst for our class of '63 coming back together. We came with our wives and thoroughly enjoyed the reunion, which was very well organised by the alumni department.
Though not our entire group attended the reunion, (and, indeed, we had lost contact with Julian Atkinson), we began to consider whether we should organise our own reunions. In 2003 we were all in our sixties and we decided that five years was a ‘safe’ interval, before meeting again in that we had reasonable prospects of surviving to our mid-sixties, so a provisional date was set for 2008.