Derek Blooman Celebrates His 90th Birthday with Family and Friends
On Monday 24th March, Derek Blooman's Birthday, family and friends gathered at the Ship Inn, Axmouth, to celebrate with Derek.
Nigel French writes:
Derek Bloomans 90th
When James Hilton wrote Goodbye Mr Chips in 1934, just before Derek was born, he could have been forgiven for not knowing that Derek would emulate Mr Chips, and more, in his long tenure and affiliation with Allhallows. It was always difficult to judge what Derek saw as his priorities: his Pupils, the School, Chudleigh House, the Faculty, The OH Club, History or Cricket. In truth, they all were, and his warmth, kindness and professionalism shone on them all equally.
When I started organising his 90th Birthday party, I was overwhelmed by the sheer number of OH’s who recited just how Derek had caused them to fall in love with History to the extent that they now have large libraries of Historical Books published on eras that Derek first exposed to them. One OH also revealed that he is writing his own book on an historical period, to which Derek opened his eyes!
The private dining room at The Ship Inn in Axmouth provided a perfect setting with excellent food and wines. The renditions of Happy Birthday and For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow had undertones of choral practices in the Chapel, in the dungeons of our old school.
Thanks are due to Tor Berry for organising and presenting to Derek a framed Cricket Shirt signed by a number of OH’s.
To David Woollatt for getting all the printed matter co-ordinated and the email addresses of many OH’s and his general help in organising the day.
To those who came, a huge thank you, to those who could not be there but donated towards our gift of a new state of the art 50” TV with Alexa to help Derek find his programmes within the subscriptions we gave him to Sky Sports, Netflix, Amazon Prime, The History Channel and Discovery plus……thank you for your generosity
But most of all thanks to Derek for being himself, doing all that he did for the school, its pupils, The OH club and so much more.
Nigel French. March 24th 2025
Photographs by David Woollatt and Geroge Hayter.
