In memoriam - Roy (Alistair Wicks)

On the evening of February 29th, Roy (Alistair Wicks) of New Creation passed away in his UK home in the presence of his daughter and son, due to kidney failure. He was 92 years old.

In 1989, Roy, a retired British police sergeant and school welfare officer, visited Auroville after the demise of his wife and was approached by André Tardeil, who at the time was setting up extended training at New Creation for village youth and needed someone to coordinate the educational efforts there. Half a year later Roy returned and started funding and establishing New Creation Bilingual School, which is now the well running CBSE-accredited Aikiyam School.

Throughout the years, Roy’s house in New Creation became an organised and educative boarding for pupils of the school who had no relatives to take care of them. ‘Roy’s Boarding’ has been a caring home from where many youngsters from the village have been guided into the world with love, an institution which survives today as ‘Malarchi’, efficiently run by two of Roy’s pupils who grew up in this home.

In 2001, suffering from a serious knee infection, Roy left for the UK, and was not able to return. He has been always in contact, via email and skype, with ‘his children’, whom he dearly missed and vice versa.

Roy, thanks to his enormous work, will be remembered with love and gratitude by numerous youth from the village who thanks to him have found a solid place in society.