I am scandalized on Founders' Day!

Today is Founder's Day of our School.

I wish all those in Mumbai celebrating this occasion, the very best.

I hope you will spare a thought for many of us who would like to be there with you to celebrate this auspicious occasion.

54er Gracie Hayeem (BentLerno) emailed me yesterday labelling me with the nickname "Detective Jacob"!

I felt scandalized by the term. :-)

What happened was that I received an email from someone in Canada who had visited this blog and seen mention of various Hayeems. The person wrote to me for further information.

I have a strict policy not to reveal the email addresses of our Cathedrlaites to anyone without their permission.

All I did was forward this email to all the many Hayeem's who are in touch with me.

57er/59er Abe Hayeem from London was quick to respond identifying this as a genuine enquiry of a niece.

So I sent them an email organising an online reunion.

This has snow-balled. Now they have discovered an enormous genealogy site where many of the famous Hayeem families of Mumbai are listed, much of the information incomplete.

Now it will be possible for the site to get one solid portion of this genealogy completed if someone has the patience to fill it up. Many Cathedralite Hayeems will feature in it.

In the genealogy site the name is not Hayeem, as we all know them, but a Jewish form, Haim.

Here is one of the many emails that were exchanged between Chloe, Abe, Gracie and another who came later on in the day - karen:

Hi Jacob,

Thank you for your reply. My dad is Joe (Joey) Hayeems and he attended the Cathedral school from 1942-1949 before he moved to Israel. He is from the family of 15 children, which are listed on that site as "Haim"....but their last name was always "Hayeem" - so there appears to be an error there. He will check and then let me know. And I see that the source of all the information on that site related to this family is Kay Mennaseh (thanks for letting me know who she is Gracie), so I would be interested in getting in touch with her.

During our trip to India this past January we visited the Cathedral, and the "headmaster" allowed us to walk around. It was very emotional for my dad and he got a kick out of looking over into the courtyard (there was a gym class taking place) and sitting in one of the classrooms!

And hello to my cousins that I have not yet met whom are listed on this email!

Karen

Dear Gracie, all I did was put you in touch! Seriously, I am not the detective!!

Only thing there seem to be a lot of web detectives getting in touch with me!

Have a great time discovering each other. It was fun for me to read some of the stories on the genealogy site dating back a couple of hundred years.

And hope all of you have a great 145th FOUNDERs' DAY.