If schoolbags could talk, Dean Cogswell’s 60-year-old leather one might have an interesting tale to tell – but its half-century disappearance promises to keep that secret.
Dean Cogswell and his old schoolbag, pictured with Leamington School principal Mike Malcolm and the school dog Otis.
Dean is a member of Cambridge’s long-established Cogswell land surveying family. Now in his mid-60s and slowly recovering from a bout of ill health, he dropped into Leamington School last week to hand over the old schoolbag he accidentally left in lost property when he was just five or six.
After spending about a year at Leamington School, Dean and his twin sister Andrea shifted to Cambridge East School when their parents, Ron and Alison Cogswell, moved into a house across the river. Andrea remembered to take her schoolbag with her, but Dean left his behind.
“I got an earful from my mum, then never saw the bag again until about 10 or 12 years ago, when someone found it and dropped it off into the Cogswell offices,” Dean told The News.
That connection was easily made because Dean’s name and the family’s phone number was written neatly in now-faded ink on the inside flap of the schoolbag.
“For a while after getting it back, I trawled around the op shops and antique dealers trying to find out who had handed it in, but no-one knew. One of them was keen to keep it… she told me it was a ‘very nice buy’.”
The adventuring bullock hide schoolbag triggered Dean’s childhood memories.
“It had a strap so I could carry it on my back. I remember feeling so proud having it with me… it was usually filled with marmite and lettuce sandwiches and two small boxes of raisins.”
Now thinning things out at home, Dean thought the time might be right for the bag to return to Leamington School – the place where it was first loved and then lost. He contacted principal Mike Malcolm and arranged the drop-off.
While waiting to go into Mike’s office, Dean thumbed through a book on the history of Cambridge.
“There, written on one of the inside pages was the name ‘V. Garcia. 1989’. That would have been Vera Garcia, who was my first teacher. It seemed such a strange coincidence… I was quite emotional at seeing that.”
Dean also remembers the principal of the day – Fred Leonard, a man he said was the brother of Kiwi television presenter and wrestling commentator, Ernie Leonard.
Mike Malcolm said it was great to have the bag at Leamington.
“It’s wonderful to see that people who were here so long ago still have that connection to the school. The schoolbag is something we will really value… it could become a great teaching opportunity for the kids.”
Despite Dean’s brush with nostalgia, the mystery of where the bag was during its ‘lost years’ remains.
“I guess I’ll never know what happened to it, but at least it’s in a good place now.”
Dean Cogswell reckoned returning his old, adventuring schoolbag to Leamington School was the right thing to do. Photo: Viv Posselt
