' The Brothers who taught me were Brothers Gordian , Ellma and Sigebert . Among our secular teachers were Mr Peter Wills , Mr McIntyre , Mr PiIlay , MrWittachy andMrSobrielo . Ican ' t rernember their Christian names as we always addressed them by their surnames . There were lady teachers only in the Primary classes .
' Mr McIntyre lived in Owen Road and passed my place on the way to school and one day he told me how much he admired the orchids in our compound . One day he said to me : " What nice orchids you have . Can you tell me how to get some ?" So I gave him some of the orchid £ lowers from our garden .
' One of the teachers who did not teach me was Mr Frank James . He taught either the year Four or Five boys . He married Iris Ess , the sister of one of my friends Cuthbert Ess who often lunched with my family .
' The Principal was always one of the Brothers , who was called Brother Director . In those years I was in SJ1 , the Principals were first Brother Michael , followed by Brother Stephen . In those days we did not know the surnames of the Brothers . They did not bother to let themselves be known by their surnames .
' About eighty percent of my classmates were Catholics . I remember some of them such as Charlie Bateman , R . de Cruz and Roy Eber . Then there were [ oseph and Boon Huat , whose sumames 1 can ' t remember . George Oehlers was the Speaker ' s cousin , Gilbert Shelley , Rex Shelley ' s father . Polo Consigliere was the Italian Annarnite . There was Yong Lim loo who was Archbishop Yong ' s brother , and Kenneth Seth who was so handsome the girls used to go to church to look at him .
' School hours were such that we had lessons from 9 am to twelve noon when we had a lunch break . Then lessons again from 1 to 4 pm . We learned subjects like English , Geography , History and Maths . Some of the boys took French . There was no Science then as we did not have any Science labs .
' It was our class habit for about half of us to go each afternoon to the Church of SSPeter and Paul , which we called the Chinese Church , to make a visit to the Blessed Sacrament . There were around twenty of us doing this , spending fifteen minutes daily to pray . We entered the church compound from SJI through a connecting gate which is no longer there now .
' During recess we bought our lunch from the hawkers selling their wares within the compound ofS ] I in what we called the Hawkers ' Hall . it was a quarter cent for a packet of kachang puteh , one cent for rojak , one cent for popiah and one cent for a bowl of mee . 1remember also things like taw suan and charkuny teaw being sold too . There was also the kanah man selling outside the school compound who offered us the only chance to indulge in some vice- he ran a chap ji kee game for the schoolboys to gamble .
' I took part in Sports and was once first in the Tandem race and third in the 440-yard sprint event .
' For a while the Governor was a Catholic named Hugh Clifford . He had a pew in the Cathedral reserved for him . My wife was then a young girl whose family had reserved the pew next to his and thus was familiar with the sight of him each Sunday attending Mass in fullmilitary regalia- feathers in his headgear and sword and all !' C . V . J . Reutens was born in 1898 . He recalls that on arriving at school each day the first thing he did was to go to the school Chapel , and ' there we used to ask Almighty God to help us .' They were encouraged by Brother Director Michael to do this .
Then the school bell would ring for Assembly under the Chapel , and after this all marched to their classrooms . Here the first thing was to say Morning Prayers . ( This was not done in the full Assembly earlier ). Then the teaching began : the first subject of the day was always Catechism .
The young Reutens used to work exceptionally hard , rising to stud y each morning at 4am by the light of a kerosene lamp . After his studies , he would walk across the road to the Church of the Good Shepherd and serve the Mass each day , and in those days the Mass was in Latin . In the Junior Cambridge he came top of his class and in the Senior Cambridge he came second . With that degree of commitment the result is hardly to be wondered at !
He recalls having to learn Scott ' s The Lady of the Lake and being made to learn a stanza a day - he enjoyed the rhymes . When tested the boys were expected to remember every punctuation mark .
He worked so hard because he felt under an obligation to the Brothers for giving him a free education . He also had a wonderful mother : ' I had my mother to pray for me .'
When he was old enough Mr Reutens became a teacher . He spent the rest of his working life , with his brother Freddie , serving SJl and the Christian Brothers ' Schools . When he retired in 1959 he had been teaching for forty-four years .
The Builder , Reverend Brother Michael 15