Class of ‘53

Not often in the history of the school did a talented pupil decide to dedicate his life’s work to the brotherhood which educated him, but James “Barry” Paton is one who did. Above-average but not outstanding, especially at sport, Jim was a member of the class of ‘53. It was not for long however as he dramatically announced to his family that he had decided at the mere age of 14 to become a Christian Brother. His father, who was not a Catholic, was very far from impressed but admirably vowed he would never stand in his way.

So it was to be that Jim found himself one of the youngest ever teacher trainees from the Brothers’ training college in Strathfield in Sydney, only four years later, to teach for the first time at CBC Wakefield St in Adelaide. During a rare visit to see him at work in the role, the sight of the newly named “Brother Barry” throwing himself into his work and coaching the under 10s and 11s in cricket won his father over. Finally, his father gave him his blessing on his chosen career.

After four years in Yarraville, Melbourne he was posted back to Leederville in Perth for nine years and was reunited with his family on a more regular basis. The complete conversion to the Brotherhood was apparent to his younger brother, who, ten years earlier had lost a huge role model. Brother Barry spent very many years in Papua New Guinea but returned to Perth and passed away in 2009.

Those who knew him, most often refer to the manner of the man: “genial: easy to get on with”. A quality that surely made him a great teacher. Another was his ability to spar intellectually with his students. He would often take the contrary view to put them through their paces, mentally. Those who knew him say Brother Barry was not the best-organised person and other than swimming, not a sportsman. But from a young age, he felt a strong calling to follow his path and become a Christian brother. Another oft mentioned quality was “his care and concern for those people less accepted by others”. Brother Barry changed many students’ lives and possessed a “deep calm”, which many attributed to his faith: “He was a true “Brother” at heart.”

Class of 1955

Victor was the son of Sicilian immigrant Salvatore Paino who arrived from the island of Fulcudi in 1911. He opened Fremantle Fish Supply in Fremantle in 1926. Salvatore believed education was the key to success and so he and his wife sacrificed many of life’s luxuries and worked a 7-day week so he could afford to send his boys to good schools. Salvatore was determined that they would have things he never did. “The best thing my father ever did for me,” says Victor “was to send me to Aquinas. The worst thing he ever did for him dropped him off at school in the old blue ute that was followed by hordes of flies who were attracted by the stench of fish". He can laugh about it looking back. Victor recalls it was a very hard life.

While his older brother was being conscripted to fight for Australia in WWII, Salvatore was interred as an Italian Prisoner of War in Harvey in 1940. Despite the fact that Salvatore had become an Australian citizen in 1920. At the age of only 15, Victor was plucked from Aquinas to join his father’s business.

Although by his own admission, not Aquinas’ finest academic, Victor is arguably one of its finest entrepreneurs. His business sense drove the family business to become the multi-million dollar enterprise that is Sealanes today. He widened the product line to include small goods and much-needed ships’ supplies to a growing port that dominated Australia’s western seaboard. Before long, his customers had upgraded from local shoppers to navies and commercial shipping. Anyone who arrived by ship in the 1950s needed to restock and so he supplied them with the best. He lived through the arrival of refrigeration, but before it came ships had an even greater need of fresh produce. Prestigious customers used his company, such as Queen Elizabeth II’s Royal Yacht Britannia on a trip to Australia.

Victor left the business 14 years ago and publically he takes no credit for the company’s success. If you ask him he will tell you that “I was very, very lucky and many people helped me”. It is his way to deflect the glory to others. He attributes his strong work ethic to his parents and the education they worked so hard to provide him. He was given the Member of the Order of Australia in 2018 for significant services to the seafood retailing industry, to ship supply services, and to the community through support of charitable groups such as Rotary and the Fremantle Hospital.

The Class of 2018 returned to the College for the annual Aquinas College Foundation Leavers’ Breakfast in the Churack Pavilion on Wednesday.

The boys enjoyed a delicious cooked breakfast and a chance to catch up with their peers, as they poured over their final College Annual.

Dean of Development Peter Robertson warmly welcomed the graduates back to Aquinas, emphasising the importance of the Annual Leavers’ Breakfast as a mechanism for the boys to reconnect with the College and their peers, so soon after graduation.

Peter congratulated the boys on their generous contribution to the College by way of the Class of 2018 Scholarship Gift, adding “…there is now a young man at Aquinas College who would not be here without your help”. Following a commissioning ceremony in early May, the 2018 scholarship commemoration plaque is hanging on the interior, north-facing wall of the Heritage Room, alongside the Class of 2017 plaque.

Old Aquinians’ Association President Matthew Noonan-Crowe also addressed the boys, encouraging them to join the OAA to take advantage of the wonderful social and networking opportunities available to them through membership.

For further information about the OAA and upcoming events, please visit the OAA’s Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/oldaquinians/ or contact Matthew at matthew@valentilawyers.com.au

We wish the Class of 2018 the best of luck in the next stage of their lives and look forward to many more opportunities to welcome them back to Aquinas College.

Class of 1967

Mike O’Driscoll is an Aquinian whose chosen subject arrived at a time when it was most needed. He studied psychology and specialised in bullying in the workplace, work-life balance, stress and burnout. Organisational psychologists have them all in the spotlight, as do educationalists, and will do for some time.

Mike comes from a long line of O’Driscolls who once ruled part of the south of Ireland, before setting out for new futures on the west coast of Australia. His father Eugene was a geologist who had been taught at Christian Brothers College Perth. Mike very sadly lost his mother at a young age. The family moved to Perth from Adelaide in 1963 and Mike went to Aquinas from 1966-67. He thoroughly enjoyed the teaching, in particular Brother Woodruff’s maths class and Brother Warner’s Latin class. He left in 1967 with the Latin prize, as a sergeant in the cadets and having played with the First XV rugby team. He described Aquinas as a “tremendous atmosphere where people were encouraged to do their best, an inspiring place”.

His younger brother Peter was a much-loved and respected Christian Brother who sadly died very young in 2001. A strong spiritual streak ran through the O’Driscoll family as Mike himself joined an order, the Passionists, after school while starting university in Sydney. He transferred to Melbourne and then withdrew from the order feeling a need to learn more about life.

Mike enrolled in Psychology at UWA in 1971 and graduated three years later. He continued with study, completing his PhD in Psychology at Flinders University in Adelaide in 1978. Mike was employed as a lecturer by the University of Papua New Guinea from 1979 to 1981 before a challenging role came up at Waikato University in New Zealand.

As Mike found his natural home in the ranks of New Zealand’s academia, a new science was being born: organisational psychology, previously known as industrial psychology. At Waikato University he established a teaching program in Organisational Psychology, including a specialist Master’s degree, and led research on stress and well-being in the workplace. He was made Professor of Psychology in 2000, and also was head of the department for nine years.

Mike’s impressive career is peppered with awards: the New Zealand Psychological Society Jamieson Award in Organisation Psychology (2014), the Vice Chancellor’s Medal for Staff Excellence (2016) and the Waikato Lifetime Research Excellence Award (2017). He has over a hundred publications in academic and professional journals and over 90 presentations at conferences over thirty-five years. Mike has supervised many PhD and Masters students and is widely published on stress in the workplace, bullying and work-life balance.

Mike has a son and daughter. Looking back, he believes Aquinas gave him a sense of commitment, a logical approach to problem-solving and a strong motivation to be successful.

Congratulations to two recent Aquinas graduates who have been recognised for their achievements by the University of Notre Dame.

Nicholas Elphick ('16) has been awarded the Prendiville Scholarship – an annual scholarship acknowledging an outstanding Aquinas graduate.

Nicholas has represented WA and Australia in Water Polo and currently has a scholarship at the WA Institute of Sport (WAIS). He is hoping to represent Australia at the U20 World FINA Water Polo Championships in Belgrade, Serbia, in August, with the ultimate goal of representing the nation at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. “I would like to thank the Prendiville family for providing this scholarship which will help me with my studies and in achieving my future goals,” Nicholas, a Bachelor of Physiotherapy student, said.

Ethan Williams ('15) received the School of Health Sciences Vice Chancellor’s Medal, which is awarded to an undergraduate student from each school with the highest average weighted percentage mark for eligible units in the previous academic year.

Ethan is studying a Bachelor of Exercise and Sport Science, alongside a Pre-Medicine Certificate and hopes to study a Doctor of Medicine in the future.

Class of 1903

Emil Nulsen came to Christian Brothers’ College at the turn of the 20th century and became the first Member of Parliament to have been educated by the Brothers. He was also arguably one of the Christian Brothers’ great and possibly most colourful characters.

Emil was an outstanding all-rounder at the school: Champion Athlete of 1902, highly skilled at rowing, running, football and cricket where, as a fast bowler, according to The West Australian: “he secured many wickets”. On leaving Aquinas, he returned to help his father in mining during the great gold rush.

However, his passage through life was not as smooth as one might imagine before he became a highly regarded and much-loved politician. At the age of 19, his father, who had mining interests in New England, had to lodge a lease in person with the warden in Wiluna within 24 hours, sixty miles away. He sent Emil to get it there before closing time, but tragically, only a few miles into the journey his horse keeled over and died. Not to be denied, the plucky Emil took off on foot: both running and walking as fast as he could. He had less than a day to do it with no help from modern technology, not even a bus! Champion athlete of 1902 stood him in good stead for the task and, exhausted and hungry, he successfully delivered the papers with 90 minutes to spare, securing the lease for his brother, his father and himself. The Lawlers to Sandstone cycling record is his to this day at 14.1mph. He was also regarded as the local boxing champion. Emil went on to become a respectable farmer and businessman in the Salmon Gums area before setting out on his next career, politics.

Happily, his journey from there to Kanowna MLA and Minister for Justice and Railways in 1939 and again as MLA for Eyre in 1953, as Minister for Justice and Health was relatively straightforward. A home for disability services was named after him in 1956 and went on to become the biggest provider for the disabled in the state. He was also the first politician with a pilot’s license, which came in handy for an electorate spanning 213,000 square miles and reaching as far as the South Australian border.

Sir Thomas Meagher left his mark on so many fields of human endeavour but everything he did was underpinned by a sense of service and community, a legacy from his time spent with the Christian Brothers.

An only child of Phillip Meagher a cordial manufacturer and his wife Annie, Thomas was sent to CBC at the age of ten as a boarder in 1911 having lost his mother the previous year. On leaving Aquinas he completed the first year of Pre-med Science at the University of Western Australia before studying at Newman College, Melbourne, from where he graduated and competed in college athletics, football, swimming and rowing.

Thomas established his own medical practice in 1927 in Victoria Park after working in Perth’s children’s hospitals as a surgeon and that year married Marguerite Winifred Hough a schoolteacher and sister of his good friend John Hough. They were blessed with six children, four boys who all studied at Aquinas and two girls. One of them, Anne, was later to marry Denis Cullity, bringing two great Western Australian families together.

Thomas was a close friend of Prime Minister Curtin and was acutely aware of Perth’s wartime vulnerability. Therefore he threw his boundless energy into future-proofing WA’s war efforts and played a crucial role in raising funds. He was active in more than twenty different philanthropic war causes. In 1937 he was elected to represent Victoria Park Ward on Perth City Council and in 1939 he was appointed Lord Mayor, almost impossible at the time for a Catholic but a position he held until 1945. He was an effective and dynamic mayor and when he announced he would not stand for re-election he declared that his mayoralty had been a “war-time measure”. It was not uncommon for him to make three public appearances in an evening to make sure the job was done.

An honorary captain in the Australian Army Medical Corps Reserve, he was declared unfit for service in World War II. He was knighted in 1947. When his wife Annie died in 1952, Sir Thomas married again and kept up the pace and scope of his work for the community.

Appropriately the walk from the Junior School is lined by the jacarandas which were promulgated by him, and so take his name. His daughter remembers that he was so connected to the school and the efforts of the Christian Brothers he helped lay the planks that served as Aquinas’ first front steps. Sir Thomas shared the brothers’ view that education was a sharp tool against the prejudice Catholics suffered at the time. Both he and they sought to help boys rise through the ranks of the workforce in a time fraught with sectarianism.

Sir Thomas played a prominent role in both the Olympics and Commonwealth Games’ bodies and was a time-keeper for the Melbourne Olympics. He maintained an active profile in the community and continued to practice medicine. Additionally, he enjoyed fishing, yachting, and gardening and was vice-patron of the National Rose Society of WA. His daughter Anne stresses that the brothers and he were tireless in their pursuit of turning out men who could contribute to the country educationally socially and culturally.

Class of 1981

James McMahon’s passage through life was not smooth. True, he finished the year of 1981 as a Prefect, with wins in the Alcock Cup and the Slazenger Cup for AFL and Tennis respectively. He was also a Cadet Under Officer. But turbulence caused by a death in his family became the backdrop for a period of soul searching. An Old Aquinian friend helped him find work on the roads while he tried to figure out what his path would be.

In time, James found that the answer was military service. The army echoed the structure given to him by the school and he found it to be “an easy step” up. James emerged 20 years later, highly decorated, as the Commanding Officer of the elite SAS Regiment and a veteran of conflicts in East Timor, Iraq and Afghanistan. His performance in the field won him both the Distinguished Service Medal and the Distinguished Service Cross.

As SAS Squadron Commander, James’ squadron was awarded the Meritorious Unit Citation for exemplary performance in East Timor. As SAS Commanding Officer, the unit was again awarded the Meritorious Unit Citation for exemplary performance in Afghanistan. Although typically modestly, James attributes his personal awards, the Distinguished Service Medal and the Distinguished Service Cross to the men and women on the ground.

The pressures of service finally took a high toll on family life, which for James could not be more important. He particularly remembers being “picked up” from a family holiday on Rottnest and waving his family goodbye to lead a deployment with the SAS. On returning from operations in 2007, he studied and successfully completed an MBA before turning to the private sector and built up a career in financial services as probably the first person to do so having led the SAS.

Financial services proved to be a day job that was easier on the family. He served as Chief Operating Officer (COO) at Azure Capital, a corporate financial advisory firm specialising in mergers and acquisitions, for five years and then with an Azure-backed management consultancy, Chauvel Group. He also spent time with another of his passions, the West Coast Eagles (2007- 2015) to support some “leadership and cultural programs” before being recruited to their board. He later became Deputy Chair. James subsequently continued his public service with the Department of Corrective Services as the Commissioner where he introduced key performance improvements.

Always in demand and multi-talented, James is currently the COO for Australian Capital Equity. He acts as an ambassador to the Fathering Project, a Trustee on the SAS Resources Fund Board is a member of the investment committee for RSL WA and is on the boards of St John of God Healthcare and the Australian War Memorial. He was named 2018 Western Australian of the Year.

James is keen to stress that “there is no cookie-cutter life” waiting for anyone. Be positive and make your way. None of his achievements came easily. The three things he carries with him every day: “Be the best person you can be – treat yourself and others with respect; always have a go and lastly do your best.”

He learned these foundations on the fields and in the classrooms of Aquinas College.

Class of 2003

John’s outstanding success at Aquinas College was fuelled by a combination of ability and determination. He says: “Nothing came easy”, but you would not think it for the Dux of 2003. John was fascinated by the opportunities robotic engineering provided. He could see a big gap in our understanding of the interface between biological science and engineering. Coming from a rich heritage of engineers, John wanted to use his time well at Aquinas and stretched himself to excel in Economics, English Literature, Physics, Chemistry, Calculus and Applied Mathematics. He attributes much of this to: “taking things apart from an early age”. At school, he immersed himself in everything Aquinas offered: playing in the Cricket XIs, Hockey XIs, a regular member of the drama production cast and playing in the College’s Santinas band. He also won the Headmaster’s Prize for Leadership.

Never happy with one of anything, John successfully completed two degrees at UWA: Bachelor of Electrical Engineering and Bachelor of Science in Human Biology. Struck by the similar cultures of UWA and Aquinas College, he thrived at university. John was frustrated by the lack of overlap between engineering and neuroscience and so studied the “brain-computer interface” in his last year at UWA. His Rhodes Scholarship propelled him into a space where engineering and medicine could co-exist. At Oxford, he graduated with an MSc in Financial Economics and Biomedical Engineering.

Along the way, he helped pioneer a device the size of a small desktop photocopier that aided early breast cancer diagnosis. He also worked on the compilation of a figure that would help diagnose a patient’s correct state of health in an ER crisis. At this stage, for him, the missing piece in the jigsaw was understanding business and how to be successful in commerce as his father had been for 35 years. So John successfully secured a place at Harvard and graduated with an MBA.

After a year as an associate at investment banking giant JP Morgan, he is now an Analyst, Special Situations at global investment and technology firm D.E. Shaw in New York. Here he finds his financial qualifications combined with his understanding of biology and how technology is helping engineering to improve lives all meet at a perfect junction.

The journey is only just beginning for this hugely talented young man. He says of his time at Aquinas College: “it was welcoming and warm and positive in spirit. That meant turning up to study was a joy! The longer I am away, I realise that what we had during high school was very special, and being away has heightened that feeling of good fortune”.

What got him to where he is today? He simply asked the question of himself every day: “How I can be the best person for those around me and how I can be the best for myself?”