During the VI’s Golden Age spanning some eight decades, it excelled in scholarship, sports and other extra-curricular activities. It gifted to the country and the world countless academicians, professionals, public servants, businessmen, captains of industry, leaders and innovators from all walks of life. Its greatness came from the unique meshing of visionary leadership, dedicated teachers many of whom were themselves former pupils, intelligent, motivated and empowered pupils, supportive parents and a corps of faithful alumni.
As a part time webmaster the past decade, Chung Chee Min has authored numerous contributions to the V.I. Web Page, a site dedicated to that school, its history, traditions and institutions, and its famous sons and daughters.
This anthology includes Chee Min’s historical material from the V.I. Web Page in addition to pieces that have not yet been posted to the site. As well, extra material from various sources – editorials, articles, reports, charts, tables, lists, interviews, and private letters – has been added to fill in narrative gaps. The contents have been grouped into historical periods and arranged in rough chronological order beginning with the seminal events of 1893 and terminating in the mid-nineteen seventies. It is, therefore, an anthology of VI pieces across the decades, in the voices of pupils, teachers, headmasters and the newspapers of the time. They report, discuss, exalt, lament, recount, explicate, boast, complain, and reminisce from their own individual perspectives.