ALUMNI OT News Please send your news to Jackie Medhurst: alumni@tettcoll.co.uk 1918 René Geenen René’s granddaughter tells us, “René was born into a wealthy family in Turnhout (Belgium). He was sent to TC from 1914 till 1918 probably to be away from the war. In the 1930s our family lost all our money as a result of the stock market crash. World War 2 started and my family stayed in Belgium. René started the Red Cross in our area and was a part of the armed resistance. This last thing is something I didn’t know, but recently I found a lot of medals and documents about it. I am so proud of him. After the war he had an important role in our village because he could speak very good English, thanks to his time at TC. His job was to translate documents.” 1969 Philip Taylor After TC I studied at commercial college and worked in the family bicycle manufacturing business. I progressed through all the factory departments into the offices eventually pursuing new export markets in Europe. I recall thanking TC for the languages I’d learned: German and French for obvious reasons, and Latin too came in very useful for Italy. I am now Finance Director of the Bicycle Association of GB and Managing Director of Schwalbe Tyres UK Ltd, however, I’m counting down to retirement at the end of 2020 at which point my younger son, David, will assume the mantle. My older son, Michael, also works at Schwalbe. From the exploits of Shackleton (my Lower School house), to the novels of Rider Haggard, Evelyn Waugh, and Papa Hemmingway, the education I received at TC gave me the stimulus to go out into the world. 1962 Stephen Corns As club secretary, Stephen works tirelessly for the OTs but before this he worked for 42 years with Goodyear (latterly Goodyear Dunlop) in marketing and sales engineering, working in London, Birmingham, Wolverhampton and Luxembourg. Stephen has been married for 45 years to Diana and they are blessed with two daughters and four grandchildren. Stephen still loves racket games and plays badminton each week with other ‘wrinklies’. (His words!) 1982 Chris Farnath I live in Wokingham and as a managing director I work with B2B cloud software and IT companies across the UK, Europe, Asia and the US. The photo shows my recently rediscovered passion for fun free-falling which began in 1983 when I did my first parachute jump. I earnt my Blue Wings this month and confess to being a bit of an addict. 68
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