Hi,
My name is Jim Druce and I was a student at MNC from 1977-1980. I was in the
same class as Andrew Bates, Joanna Bates (nee Simmonds), Trevor
Grove and Neil Johnston. It was our year that finally convinced the then
new Deputy Principle Frank Mayoh to allow the setting up of the student union
bar. I was the initial Bar Committee secretary and regularly took turns with
the rest of the committee to man the bar.
The building of the bar was a godsend to myself as I was constantly being evicted from the two nearest pubs for being underage even though I was by that time 18. It also had the added benefit of reducing the antagonism that existed between the poorer grant maintained Radio students and the much richer Navigation students.
I left MNC in 1980 to start a job at Mars Electronics International and I am still there after 21 years. Mars (yes we are part of the chocolate ) manufacture transaction electronics equipment and are currently running full steam ahead to support the European introduction of the Euro in 2002.
I kept in contact with one other class mate for a short while but then we lost touch. His name was Keith Branston and he lived in Westcliffe-on-sea, I know his first job was with a computer and involved on site repairs of hard drive crashes. Other students from our 1997-1980 class were:
Mark Fay - lived in Crowborough [worked at Racal Defence Radar and Displays in late 1983 where we met - Ed.]
Mark Hopkins - lived in Shorham (Kent)
Grant Cartlidge - lived in Eastbourne
John French - left early to transfer to a University degree course.
Ron Touw - worked for the Police Radio section
There were along with Joanna two other female students in our class. One was called Victoria but cannot remember her surname, I do know she started working for GCHQ when she left in 1980. The other left a year early after being diagnosed with a brain tumour, this was successfully operated on but affected her short term memory and she lost most of the second year of studies. I have completely forgotten her name as well as a lot of the other students in our class.
The idea of a reunion sounds fantastic, it has taken ages searching the internet for any mention of the MNC and was extremely happy to finally track this site down. Hope this information is useful and hope to hear from you soon.
Regards
Jim
Email via MRGC1980