6
UWI TODAY
– SUNDAY 6th JULY, 2014
ENERGY
M MORIAM – KEITH ORMISTON LAURENCE
Keith was educated at QRC
—where else?—won
the Modern Studies Island Scholarship, and went to
Cambridge, where he took his BA and PhD degrees.
Soon after he was awarded his PhD, a pioneering study
of post-emancipation immigration to Trinidad and
Guyana, he came to teach at what was then the UCWI,
at Mona, Jamaica. He joined the first group of West
Indian historians teaching there, notably Elsa Goveia,
Douglas Hall and Roy Augier. Carl Campbell, then
an undergraduate, remembers him at Mona driving a
low, red, open-top Triumph sports car, looking “quite
the dashing bachelor” (Carl’s words). Keith stayed
at Mona from 1959 to 1972, and it was here that he
met, courted and married Kemlin Ching who taught
Spanish literature. In 1972 he returned to his homeland
as Professor of History at St Augustine, a post he held
to his retirement in 1995.
Keith was very much a scholar, a meticulous,
careful researcher in the archives, and awriter of precise
andmeasured prose—a historian’s historian. His major
research field was post-emancipation immigration
into the West Indies, and his first book,
Immigration
into the WI in the 19th Century
, is still widely read,
especially by students. Carl remembers that sentences
from that short book have been endlessly quoted (and
misquoted) in numberless essays by A-Level and
undergraduate students over the 40-plus years since
it first appeared. He is best known for his magisterial
book
A Question of Labour
, an authoritative study
of indentured Indian immigration to Trinidad and
Guyana. But he also wrote an important book on
Tobago between 1793 and 1815, and, of course, many
articles and book chapters. Later in his life he took
on the editorship of a volume of the UNECO History
of the Caribbean series—a difficult assignment, as I
know from personal experience, which he brought
successfully to completion.
As a teacher, Keith was always exceptionally
well prepared, and interested in his subject; he was
a knowledgeable, meticulous lecturer, tutor and
examiner. I’m told he made such an impression on
students at QRC, where he taught briefly before going
to Mona, that more than one went as far as adopting
his unmistakable, perfectly formed handwriting style.
I first knew him as a teacher at Mona in 1964/65—
there are several others here who were his students
at Mona—and I remember how well structured his
lectures and tutorials were, how carefully he marked
your essays—if you got an A from Laurence you were
a certified genius with bragging rights forever.
Here at St Augustine, Keith taught generations
of students our core Year 2 courses on West Indian
history, compulsory for History Majors. They found
him formidable, outwardly severe, even stern;
but if they got to know him they soon found how
approachable he was, how interested in their work;
and they all appreciated how meticulous he was in
his class preparation and his marking of essays and
exam scripts.
Much more than a teacher of undergraduates and
postgraduates, Keith was a genuine mentor to younger
colleagues and research students—something we
don’t always do well at UWI. He was most definitely
a wonderful, life-long mentor to me—I joined the
Department the same year that he came here from
Mona. Howard Johnson, who recently retired from
the University of Delaware, told me that Keith had
been a huge influence on his life and career path.
Swithin Wilmot, current Faculty Dean at Mona,
called him a warmly supportive colleague over many
decades. Glenroy Taitt has told me that when he was
a temporary lecturer filling in for someone on leave,
Keith was the one who advised and encouraged him
in his first foray into university teaching. I’ve no doubt
many others here and elsewhere regarded him as a
mentor and supporter. He didn’t suffer fools gladly but
if he thought you were worthwhile, he was generous
with his time, expertise and experience. He was a
genuine role model in the academy. And he was always
a genial host toMona and Cave Hill colleagues visiting
for University meetings. Indeed, Eddie Baugh wrote
a charming poem celebrating evenings on the Santa
Margarita verandah with Roy Augier and others.
Keith was devoted to UWI and served it well. He
was cross-campus Dean of the then Faculty of Arts &
General Studies (1975-78), a long-serving Chair of the
cross-campus Board for Examinations, and Campus
Co-coordinator for Graduate Studies. (He handed over
that last portfolio to Clem Sankat, who has said how
much he valued Keith’s work on behalf of the graduate
students). Woodville Marshall, his close friend and
often sparring partner, who spoke eloquently about his
life-long relationship with Keith at his 80th birthday
party last year, asked me to say:
“The University will always be grateful to him for
the work that he did on the Board for Examinations,
because he became an expert on all the rules and
regulations, and was therefore the obvious port of
call whenever an intricate rules/regulation issue had
to be deciphered. I remember attending a meeting
of the Board and looking on with awe and some
amusement at how deftly he andMartin Aub, the other
expert, despatched all the trifling interventions. These
exchanges left Bill Mailer, whomK.O. succeeded as the
Chair, bobbing his head from side to side, as though
he was watching a tennis match.”
In everything he did, Keith upheld the highest
standards, not only in academic work but also in
university administration and management. He
didn’t always agree with what the University did, and
successive VCs, Principals and Registrars were the
recipients of robustly written letters expressing his
dismay at the latest decision he disapproved of. But his
loyalty to the University could never be questioned.
I remember that at a function for his retirement,
thenVCAlisterMcIntyre said that as long as Keith was
chair of the Board for Examinations, he knew that all
UWI’s examination relatedmatters were in safe hands.
Indeed, his chosen academic discipline, history, and
his University to which he dedicated all his working
life, were in safe hands with him. I hope that he too is
now in a place of safety and peace.
AHistorian’s Historian
Professor Emeritus K.O. Laurence passed away on Monday June 9, 2014,
and was buried at the campus cemetery on June 12, next to his late wife Dr Kemlin Laurence.
This is the eulogy delivered by Professor Emerita Bridget Brereton.
Keith upheld the highest
standards, not only in academic
work but also in university
administration and management.
