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Aberdare Boys’ Grammar SchoolSchool Photographs |
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Harold Ivor James’ Class, 1939
from School records via Mark Jefferies
Harold Ivor James and his class; sitting next to him, with the mortar board, is the headmaster W. Rees Williams who was about to retire.
H.I. “Jimmy” James was the School’s second teacher of Biology.
He was born in 1908 in Abergavenny, but his elementary education took place in Swansea 1915–18, and Llandovery 1918–19. He then spent the years 1919–26 at Llandovery County School, taking his Highers in Botany, Chemistry and French. Entering, what was then, the University College of South Wales and Monmouthshire in 1926, (now Cardiff University), he took a 1st Class Honours degree in Botany in 1929.
He commenced his duties at Aberdare Boys County School in September 1930, teaching chemistry, botany and zoology. Four years later, in 1934, he married Doris Kathleen Davis in Walsall, Staffordshire, and eventually settled in Park Grove, Trecynon.
He joined H.M. Forces in early 1942 and returned to school in late 1945. He took up a new post in 1950 at Dixie Grammar School, Market Bosworth in Leicestershire. Jimmy died in 1996 aged 87 in Warwickshire.