Roald Ekholm's Story

Having met Roald during our reunion of 1994 I was curious how he became a B.F.C. student in 1943. How did a Finnish boy end up going to Feild?

It is 1941 and the war is raging in Europe. The Russians are threatening to invade Finland. Roald's father was the master of a 3 500 ton cargo vessel of Norwegian ownership but was under a Finnish flag. The owners kept their vessel the Oddvar II on the other side of the Atlantic and thus Roald's father was away from his family much of the time. While on a trip home to Finland Roald's father decided that it was far to dangerous for his family to remain there so he made plans to bring them to North America.

The problem was that the Baltic and North Seas were practically closed to commercial shipping so he had to try and get them to the northerly part of Finland to a port called Lilmahamari. First they took the train from Helsinki to Ronaviemi and then by bus to Lilmahamari. In the group were Roald's parents, his sister and Roald himself.

This trip took several days but they finally arrived and embarked on a ship called the S/S Hammerland. She was destined for Vera Cruz in Mexico. Roald tells of the cabin he was in which was filled with emergency equipment in case the ship was attacked by German U-Boats and sunk. It was not a comforting feeling at all. However, the S/S Hammerland was never to make it to Mexico

Roald Ekholm

Well, I have finally received a response to my letter that I sent to Roald several months ago. He has replied with the story about how he came to be a student at BFC from 1943-45. He has also included a picture of a much younger Roald at that time. Over the next week or so I will put the highlights of that adventure for that is what it could only be for a boy of 12 or so at that time during the war on the high seas.
Below is a picture of Roald in his uniform with the BFC crest just visible on his blazer pocket.

Anyone For Cricket

As you can see from the above picture Cricket was played at the college in 1910 and we won the championship that year. Cricket would be a natural game for English boys to play and since our founder came from England, I am sure cricket followed him here. I did some research and found that Mr. Job of Job Brothers Ltd. also "introduced" cricket to St. John's. It was played in the Pleasantville area where there was a large flat piece of land.

Cricket is no longer played here and that goes back to the early 1900's, after 1910. It seems that the weather was not conducive to playing cricket and games sometimes took a week to finish. In one edition of The Feildian there was a hue and cry when cricket was removed from the college's list of sports and replaced with basketball. Several articles were written saying how could this be allowed to happen; the national game of the mother country cast aside in the oldest colony. Shame! Shame!

But we Feildians did play it and played it well as can be seen from this picture. They are a smart lot!!

More Feildians

Boys, have a look at some of the pages from The '55-'56 Feildian. I am sorry that the cover is inverted. Maybe you can fix that in your browser. REMEMBER TO CLICK YOUR BACK BUTTON TO RETURN TO THE BLOGSITE.

Feildian 1955-56 (1)

Feildian 1955-56 (2)

Feildian 1955-56 (3)