Page 15 - NJC Magazine Spring 2017

NJC Founder, Leonard Wilde 1912-1965
S
Carmela Reyes
Finding
Leo
nard Wilde
Communications Coordinator
ixty years of students have been educated and inspired at Neuchâtel Junior College.
As the Class of 2017, our 61st graduating class, embarks on their next great life adventure, we at Neuchâtel Junior College think of Mr. Leonard Wilde, the visionary that dreamed up NJC and made it a reality in 1956.
Like our students, British born Leonard Wilde had an adventurous and determined spirit. His early years were spent in South Africa, and as an adult, he travelled throughout Europe and even worked in British Intelligence during the war as a linguist. His travels brought him to the picturesque town of Neuchâtel, where he decided he would work as an educator.
Having spent some time in British Columbia in the 1950s, Mr. Wilde decided that his school would be for Canadian students. He began recruiting teachers in Neuchâtel and meeting families in Ontario to recruit students, the first of which was Mr. Peter Hebb ’57. Mr. Wilde’s vision of an interdisciplinary, experiential independent school came to life in September of 1956 with 43 students, and he continued to travel with and educate students until his tragic and untimely death in September 1965.
In 2013, alumnus James Carr ’62 came forward to share memories of his experience with Mr. Wilde at our extraordinary school – an experience that had so deeply and positively impacted his life that he wished to pay his respects to his Head of School at his gravesite. Unfortunately, at this time, the resting place of our founder’s body was unknown. Some believed that he had been interred in his home away from home, Switzerland, while others believed that his body had been repatriated and buried in Great Britain.
According to Mr. Jim Thayer, who had acted as interim Head of School after Wilde’s death, Wilde’s body was buried in the Cimetière Beauregard in Neuchâtel. However, when current Head of School, Bill Boyer, visited the cemetery in January 2014, he learned that although Leonard Wilde had initially been buried there, his body had been moved eight months after the funeral and details of why or where were undocumented.
The search continued over the next year or so, with NJC staff and alumni seeking out clues as to where our founder was buried. Last year, the investigation took off when members of the NJC Community reached out to aid us in solving the mystery of the whereabouts of Leonard Wilde’s remains. From old census reports to ship passenger lists, each clue was a new puzzle piece leading us to the final picture that we have today.
Leonard Wilde has been found. After his body had been exhumed in spring 1966 from the cemetery in Neuchâtel, he was repatriated and re-buried in Sale Cemetery in Trafford, Metropolitan Borough of Manchester in Great Britain, where he rests in peace today.
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