Petit Séminaire Collège Saint Martial
October 1969 – June 1976: Our Golden Years

People always say they would probably not change a thing if they were to live their lives over again. Not me. I would make quite a few different choices. One thing I would definitely not change though, is my time at the PSCSM. Not for all the riches in the universe!

This school is very special to me. The PSCSM shaped me into who I am today. I can find the primary reason for everything I like (or dislike) today in something I learn from someone associated with the school. It could be a Classmate, a Teacher, a Priest or a Coach.

And the Class of 1976 is also unique, historically speaking. It’s the first Class of the Secondary Cycle without the Spiritans Fathers and Brothers, who were ousted on suspicion of conspiracy and political agitation, in 1969.

We should get reunited, all of us members of the Class 1969-1976, even if it’s online through Facebook, Twitter, Myspace or else. This is the Networking Era, for God’s sake! Some of us might unknowingly live in the same neighborhood, in a town somewhere in Europe, Canada or the United States. We could even be on the same street! We must find a way to meet, or at the very least, have phone or email contact.

One of my most burning desires has always been to have a class reunion. It’s been more than thirty years: it is long overdue. Granted, we are scattered all around the globe. But, most of us are in the United States or Canada. It’s almost like one country! I know there is a significant number of us in France and other countries in Europe and Latin America. Still, there is no reason why we cannot be a little closer.

Me and Jean Edward Cayard, we always crack up when we go down memory lane. Who does not remember the PwaGrate incident, Teneur, D6, Saint Roc et son Chien, Rosie, the hole-carying truck, Decoco, U grec, Geralda (Gerala), Abet, Louvic, etc? If you don’t remember, you need to be reminded!

We do enjoy talking about all the jokes, the name-calling, the pranks we played on each other and on the teachers. We absolutely love the memory of the funny circumstances around it all. But, we sorely miss the characters behind them. I mean deeply…

Of course, we are not forgetting the Teachers and the Priests. Some of them were quite unique also. We have to get reunited! We share way too much. We have tons of things to talk about, we have loads of memories. And who knows what else?

Who could forget Descollines, Alfred Serge, Pompier, Bernard Mayard, the guys behind Eclosion, Richard Neptune, Jean René Pierre-Pierre, Preppy Darney, Charlier, Bato, Ti-Mathieu, el alumnooooo Riquet, Dorval, Floup, De la Fuente, Casamajor, Rony, Ti-Lou, and all the others? We were a bunch of about sixty young men who met five to seven days a week (if you count Saturday Sports and Sunday Mass) for seven straight years. Those were indeed our golden years!

Yesterday, Jean Edward Cayard and myself (Antoine Pierre-Paul), we decided that it’s about time we do something about it. We are going to set up an Online Meeting Place, where Names, Street Addresses, Telephone Numbers, Email Addresses, etc, will be collected and shared among all of us.

As usual, I want a lot more! (I am greedy like that). There must be Facebook, Twitter, MySpace profiles and what-not, with all the family and vacation pictures. If there are any Photobucket, Flickr photo albums or else, they will be included also. Pictures of ourselves, taken around the time we were in school would be priceless! Wouldn’t they? Yes! We want them too.

On this site, all the pictures, the drawings, the students’ and teachers’ names, and even the jokes titles will be ‘live’. This means that everything will be linked to another page with the corresponding information about the person or the topic. We will try to protect everybody’s privacy as much as we can. However we cannot and will not hide D6 identity. That was too funny! Everyone has to know who Teneur was, and why. You understand the concept.

The first element of the project will be the Classroom Pages with a Drawing like this one. It is a typical classroom in the Secondary building. As far as I remember, there were seven rows comprising from six to eight desks (please, correct me if I am mistaken).

Everybody’s job will be to ‘populate’ these classrooms. In the Comment area on each page, you would input your name (and other info) and the names of the people you remember and indicate where you think they were seated in class. If you happen to have pertinent contact information, you are invited to include it also.

The second element of this important project, will be the Personal Pages, one for each and every student and educator. The interested party will provide the necessary facts and personal data, and we the people, will tell the jokes and spread the dirt. (Here, you’re supposed to smile, specially if you are Rosie or D6).

As far as Privacy is concerned, let it be known that all information that can be found online will be included. It’s a matter of Public Records. There is no invasion of privacy there.  If you’ve ever registered a phone, held public office, gone to college or bought a house, you can be found: the information is there, in the open! Do not blame us: you could have stayed hidden under a rock. (Smile again!)

Well, let’s roll up our sleeves and start… filling those desks. As far as I am concerned, I will start building the Personal Pages with info I have already gathered from Facebook and al. Then, I will invite these guys to add whatever information they want to share on their pages.

I, (APP, le fils de René!) will try and make sure the whole thing works and holds together. Suggestions, Comments, Criticicism, and Help with Proofreading, Layout, Html code, Javascript, etc, are more than welcome. This is your Meeting Place. Please make it whatever you want it to be. Network, network, network!

By the way, what do ‘Cum palam converterat’, ‘Zo de poulet, zo de pigeon’ and ‘Je suis Zému’ have in common? They are, along with tons of other bits, part and parcel of our precious lore, the lore of this memorable Class of 1976. We cannot afford to lose all this. Specially after all we have lost recently. This is the main reason behind this online meeting place. This would be our version of Classmates, but a million times better! Let’s do this!

Please, proceed to the Classroom List to start.