Galibardy. Picture by Vivek Singh

Kurseong, Nov. 4: Olympian Joseph Galibardy, now 92, still remembers how scared he used to be of the English games masters at Goethals Memorial School when he was a student there.

“Goethals was the foundation of my hockey career. I learnt a lot from the games masters there, all of whom were English. They were very strict and we were really scared of them,” said Galibardy, the only surviving member of the Indian hockey team that won gold in the 1936 Berlin Olympics.

Galibardy has come here from London to take part in the centenary celebrations of his alma mater.

“Initially Goethals was the only school in the hills that played hockey. Later on, Victoria School started playing the game and we used to have tough battles with them. The two schools were the fiercest rivals, be it in hockey or in cricket,” he said.

The cricket matches are something that Prakash Bhartia, another famous former student of Goethals, remembers vividly, especially since he was a member of his school team.

“Old timers here know that a cricket match between Goethals and Victoria was a great battle. People used to come from every corner of the hills to watch the games,” said Bhartia, who is considered an authority on electro-magnetic systems and has been awarded the Order of Canada. He studied in Goethals between 1950 and 1960.

“The other thing I remember is how disciplined life used to be in this school. Everything was according to routine. That discipline paid off for me,” said Bhartia.

Yesterday, the alumni association of Goethals Memorial handed over the Golden Wreath award to Galibardy and the Golden Alpha award to Bhartia.

Before that, in the morning, the toy train took the General Officer Commanding, 33 Corps, Lt Gen. Dipak Raj, along with some former and current students of the school, to the now-abandoned Goethals Siding stop. The idea was to retrace the same journey made by the then Lieutenant Governor of Bengal, Andrew Fraser, on April 29, 1907, when he came here to inaugurate the school.

Later, more than 500 former students in full uniform took part in a march past on the school ground that has been renamed after Galibardy. The computer lab of the school will from now on be called Prakash Bhartia Computer Laboratory.