BRIAN BAGNALL

1957




2005

Brian Bagnall NSBHS 1954-1958

After two glorious years in a wonderful co-ed “opportunity class” at Fort Street Primary School my five years at NSBHS by comparison seemed like five years of incarceration in a cruel prison. With canings for those who strayed from the rules and a competitive male militaristic hierarchy of captains, prefects and sports teams, as a small and immature child I struggled to survive both there and also in a dysfunctional family with a divorced working mother. Most of the teachers at the school were pretty incompetent in my mind then. Fortunately my NSBHS classmates were a fabulous bunch of witty interesting characters who greatly enriched my life.

Despite my quite poor Leaving Certificate results, just 2 A’s and 4 B’s, I somehow got a scholarship to go “Uni” where I studied veterinary science for five years and had a lot of fun. In 1964 I went into clinical practice in Wollongong but returned to Sydney University a year later to get the higher education I had previously resisted by teaching in the blood and guts veterinary surgery department.

Like many at my age I then went to the UK in 1967 to see more of the world and told my mother I’d be away just a year. I never returned to work in Australia again. I was lucky to get another clinical teaching job in the vet school at Cambridge University and soaked up music and beauty in the historic city. I got married there in 1969 to a vivacious English girl and in 1971-72 we spent a year in Vienna where I did some irrelevant graduate study in veterinary dermatology and learned to speak passable German. I returned to Sydney in 1972-75 to do a PhD at the university and there we had our first son. We went back to the UK and, after some postdoctoral work and the birth of our second son, I got a job in the pharmaceutical industry with Smith, Kline & French in Welwyn Garden City north of London.

I spent 27 years with the company, now GlaxoSmithKline, in a wide variety of intriguing technical, marketing, government affairs and public relations jobs in both animal and human health that took me all over the world. In 1980 they relocated me to the USA in the Philadelphia area where I lived for 26 years and became a US citizen in 1999.

I retired at the end of 2003 and in 2006 moved to Florida to escape harsh winters forever living full-time now in tropical oceanside Fort Lauderdale. Here I join other old geezer pensioners who wander aimlessly about wearing just sunhats, Speedos and flip-flops. I have rediscovered my creative side and sing in a men’s’ choir as well as going to lots of classical music and other concerts.

My 20-year marriage ended in 1989 after I told my wife, who I adored, that I thought I was really gay. After a year trying to cope with this marital bombshell, we ended with an acrimonious divorce and much needless family estrangement. We only reconciled when she got a brain tumor and then died in 1999. My 34 year-old son Clive lives in the Philadelphia area with his young wife and my 32 year-old son Peter lives in California as a single parent with three kids aged 6 –12, who I rarely see. For the past 16 years I have lived with my partner Michael, also a foreign-born veterinarian, and we have enjoyed the best of American domestic life with many exotic travel vacations. Last year we spent 80 days travelling around the world including five weeks in Sydney and NSW and recently we spent two weeks in Japan. Sorry I won’t be at the Reunion but send my best wishes and greetings to all in the unforgettable Class of 1958. (see photos on next page)