Andrew says “My mother Aileen came on bursary to Mary Erskine. Her father had lost his father in childhood and went to work to support his mother and siblings; there was no money. He became ‘Allan Swanson OBE JP’, displaying it with deserved pride on her wedding invitations, but Mary Erskine was a door through which no one else in the family could have passed. It took my mother into a different attitude toward life. She loved literature; inspired by an animated Episcopalian teacher, Mary King, whose framed photograph stood on our mantel. She loved being with friends. When I think of the motto, mitis et fortis, I can think of my mother, less because my mother was naturally either mitis or fortis, than because I can see how firm and welcome was the school’s mark on her in those ways, how great the difference was that it made. There’s a Latinate sentence of which she’d approve.”
Remembering Aileen Powney (Swanson), MES 1959
Aileen attended MES on a Merchant Company bursary in the 1950s and was the first of her family to have such an opportunity. Andrew, Aileen’s son, arranged for a lasting tribute to his mum for the school she loved so much. A memorial bench has been installed at Ravelston in her memory.
