Jim Conneely 1961 to 1966
It’s always a privilege to be contacted by former St Mary’s boys and I’m grateful that so many share details of what became of them after they left the old place.
We all go on different journeys and success comes in many forms. Take Jim Conneely, for instance, who arrived at St Mary’s from St Anne’s, Orpington in 1961. His story is one of real success, but perhaps not in the conventional sense of the word. But who cares about convention?
His recollections of the school during the early 60s when Fr Charles Howarth was headmaster provide a fantastic insight into the sights and sounds of a school which was, perhaps, struggling for identity in a fast-changing world. These will have to wait for the book.
Jim was an active participant in the annual school play. In 1965, when he was a fourth former, Adrian Jarvis handed him the role of Toinette, maid and nurse to Argan, in Moliere’s brilliant comedy The Imaginary Invalid.
Jim Conneelly, far right, as Toinette in the 1965 adaptation of The Imaginary Invalid
The following year Jim, along with Christoper Tauber and Anthony Ring played one of the three witches in Macbeth.
This is what happened next:
“A crisis meeting was called by the school, my parents and the Parish Priest. I was asked if I had a vocation to be a priest and trying to be honest said maybe, instead of no. It was arranged for me to go on a scholarship to Winslade school in Devon, an outpost of the Marist Catholic Order, near the seminary In Paignton.
“It was a boarding school and I learned to smoke French cigarettes, heard Sergeant Pepper in the common room and went to my first nightclub in Torquay. I guess the priesthood wasn’t my destiny so I set out to find it by running away. I was returned in disgrace and laid low till I left at the end of lower Sixth.
“After leaving school I went wild and feral. I disappeared in a haze of squats, drugs and free love until I woke up in prison undergoing a two-year wake up. I adapted and survived until 1980 when I found myself in a drug rehab in Oxford for 18 months under pain of returning to prison.
“I finally realised in 1993 that I was an addict and gave up alcohol, heroin and every mind altering substance forever. I am now 27 years in recovery and it suits me very well. I am a retired NHS Health Outreach specialist living an idyllic life in Battersea. Oh, I nearly forgot I went to University in 2000 and graduated with a BA in Fine Arts so I guess I’m an artist now. I’d love to find out if my peers all became Estate Agents?”
Jim’s is a success story in anyone’s book.