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January 2014
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Professor Wilson joined its Faculty of Agriculture in 1967 as a Lecturer and Senior Lecturer in Plant Physiology/Biochemistry after three years at the Ministry of Agriculture’s Central Experiment Station in Centeno. He was well known for his work in tropical root crop physiology and post-harvest biology, the primary areas of his training and subsequent research. An early student of the University College of the West Indies in Jamaica, he graduated with the BSc (Botany, Zoology, Chemistry) in 1957 and the MSc in Plant Physiology (1960), before going to the University of Bristol, Long Ashton Research Station, where he obtained the PhD in Plant Physiology in 1964. Returning to Trinidad, he pursued research on mineral nutrition of vegetable and field crops, such as sweet potato, cassava and yams, and the formulation of fertilizer recommendations for farmers. By 1975, he was appointed a Professor of Crop Science and served UWI as Head of that Department (1975-1980) and as Dean of the Faculty of Agriculture for three terms over 1981-1986 and 1991-1994. He introduced courses in Plant Biochemistry, Post-harvest Physiology and Commodity Utilization to BSc and MSc curricula, and as Dean he contributed to the introduction of Extension research and development, short-course and certificate training as well as Distance Education at the postgraduate level. He retired in 2002. He also supported the Faculty Commodity Research Programme and led the University’s Root Crop Programme, which pioneered an agro-economic outreach programme with farmers, using techniques known as “on farm” research. He was appointed Editor-in-Chief of the UWI journal, “Tropical Agriculture” in July 2005. In 2012, UWI St Augustine named one of its labs in the Department of Food Production, Faculty of Food and Agriculture, the Lawrence Wilson Food Biology Laboratory. Professor Wilson’s contributions were global. He sat on many boards and was consultant to many countries on behalf of the Food and Agriculture Organisation. In 2000, he received the NIHERST Lifetime Achievement Award for his outstanding contribution to root crop research and post-harvest biology. He also gave over 20 years of public service to various national Boards such as the National Council for Technology Development, Fertrin, Central Marketing Agency, Cardi, Caroni, and the Sugarcane Feeds Centre among others. He was made an Honorary Life Member of the Association of Professional Agricultural Scientists of Trinidad and Tobago (APASTT), named an Icon in Science and Technology of Trinidad and Tobago, and received the “Commitment to Excellence Award” in recognition of distinguished teaching and research in Postharvest Physiology and Biochemistry, from the International Society for Horticultural Science (ISHS) in July 2013. Before the interment at the UWI St Augustine campus cemetery, he was eulogized at the funeral at Our Lady of Fatima RC Church by the Deputy Principal, Professor Rhoda Reddock, and his son Anthony, and his widow, Desiree’s eulogy was read by his son, Evan. This is Anthony’s eulogy. Lawrence Wilson, whose life we celebrate today, passed from this life on December 2, 18 days after his 79th birthday. He was an accomplished academic, rising to the post of full professor at The University of the West Indies in 1975 at the age of 41. He led a full and rewarding life and received several honours locally, regionally and internationally for his many contributions in the field of agriculture. But for us, his four sons—Gareth, Evan, Anthony and Dion—he was a man we loved, admired, cherished and respected because of the upright way he led his life. He led by example: All of us have memories of him getting up at 5am every morning and going to his study in which he would work for at least three hours before having his breakfast. This discipline, which he would have developed as a pre-teen, stayed with him until almost the end of his life. We learnt from early in our lives that the morning hours were to be periods of quiet. This disciplined approach to his work was reflected in other habits that he developed as a father and an academic. As a father, we all remember the many Friday nights at the Kay Donna drive-in cinema and every Sunday morning was dedicated to Church, the Roman Catholic Church in St Joseph. He was a man of God, who walked with Jesus and lived his life through the code of the 10 Commandments. He was a disciplined and God-fearing man. This discipline led him to be productive man, which was attested to earlier by UWI St Augustine’s Deputy Principal, Professor Rhoda Reddock. As a father of four boys, his outstanding qualities were his calmness and his tolerance. He never raised his voice or his hand to anyone in the household; although there would have been instances over the years when he would have been provoked. He opted to deliver words of discipline in the same calm voice and manner that he did everything else. But the calmness did not hide the fact that he was serious. For church, we remember him dressing the four of us at a time, pulling our shirts down through our underwear; we remember the times when he would line us up and cut our hair, one after the other; we remember him singing us to sleep every night; we remember the pride we felt when we would go to watch him playing cricket and when we played cricket with him. We remember the study leave trips to Holland, Germany, England and Ohio and the pride in his family, his few close friends who were like his brothers. We remember the trips to the beach and the raft he constructed from the huge inner tube of a truck tire attached to wooden board. And we remember his humour such as his insistence that the wings were the best part, when all of us were trying to avoid them. Our father was a patient man: To illustrate this, an anecdote from Gareth, his eldest son, that has become somewhat of a family classic. Every Sunday, for many years, Daddy would take his wife and children to visit his parents who lived in Barataria. We would all pile into his beige Vauxhall Victor, PH 845, and set off along the Eastern Main Road to Barataria. One Sunday, as we were passing the poultry feed mill in St Joseph—Gary must have been eight or nine—two words on a sign caught his eye. The words were SCRATCH GRAIN. Not knowing what they meant, he asked our father: “Daddy, what’s scratch grain?” Now, like most other families, our family outings could sometimes be quite noisy affairs, so Gary’s question could very well have been drowned out in the surrounding hubbub. But it wasn’t. Daddy had heard it and dutifully began to reply: “Scratch grain is...” But before he could finish, thinking that he had not heard the question, Gary asked again: Daddy, what’s scratch grain?” And again, he began: “Scratch grain is...” This was repeated about four or five times. And each time Gary asked the question, Daddy calmly began his explanation, until our mother, Desiree, got fed up and put an end to it all. Lawrence Wilson’s patience for his family, friends and colleagues knew no bounds. Our father was also a lover of languages... So much so that from an early age, we were exposed to his “renditions” of several Latin and French expressions, not to mention his imitation of various accents, including Nigerian, Italian and Spanish. Our earliest recollection is one Latin expression, which he used on more than one occasion to justify his taking the choicest piece of chicken as we sat down to dinner. Having speared the leg and the breast of the bird and deposited it on his plate, he would then announce in Latin: “Eum hesitavit perditus est.” At other times, in exactly the same circumstance, he would make the same announcement, but in French: “Celui qui hesite est perdu.” We were to quickly learn the meaning of these expressions: “He who hesitates is lost!” Our father was a caring, patient, tolerant, principled and funny man, who, in his quiet way, instilled in each of his sons a strong sense of family, honesty and consideration for others. Yes, we will miss him, but only for a little, for he will be present in our hearts and minds for as long as we live. He loved cricket and he loved pan. He developed his love of pan as a university student at UWI’s Mona campus and he remained very proud of the fact that he was a member of one of the first tours of Europe by the UWI steelband, Mona in 1957. While he was not one given to liming, in his later years, one of the things he looked forward to was the trips to panyards every Carnival. With discipline, tolerance and production, he lived the watchwords of the nation he was proud to call his home. And in that respect, he was one of scores of Caribbean people who, having received their advanced degrees from foreign universities, chose to return to the region to lay down their bucket. If there is one word that we agree best sums up the man, it would be graceful. Graceful not in the sense of the elegance of manner, movement and speech—because he had those in spades—but that he was full of grace, which Christians understand to mean the free and unmerited favour of God as manifested in the salvation of sinners and the bestowing of blessings. He shared those blessings with all he came in contact with and we are all better people for having known him. This is a remembrance from Desiree Wilson, his wife of 51 years. You have heard the many tributes offered about my late husband, Lawrence Aldridge Wilson (he was particularly proud of his middle name)…words that make him out to be a great intellect, a tireless academic, a gentle, serious humble son of the soil. However, I want to disabuse you of this public understanding of this man, with whom I have shared three quarters of my life. I want to make sure that you leave here with a clear understanding of the man that he really was. He was definitely not a humble man. As a matter of fact, many of you would know that he fancied himself as a “rosy tess.” Nor was he a serious man. He had an element of quirky humour, which he kept to the very end. This was such a positive part of his character that I once said to a friend that I could never leave him because, who would make me laugh? He was tolerant to the point of irritation. Do you know what it was like to live with someone with whom you could not pick a fight and who would allow you to spend large sums of his money on art which he neither particularly liked nor appreciated, only to be subsequently told that they were in fact great gifts from him to me. He allowed the boys and myself to do our own things. He gave us the freedom to express ourselves and develop our characters in our own way. He never preached. He never laid down the law; but by the example of his living, instilled in his sons a sense of honesty, decency and duty. I wish today to pay public tribute to a man who had a strong sense of duty, love of family and who never had the need to present himself as something that he was not. I feel that I have been lucky and blessed to have had him in my life and to have shared with him the upbringing of our four sons, whose devotion to their father in his last 12 days knew no bounds. I thank them and I thank all of those who have provided us with both their spiritual and practical support. I would also like to thank those who have come from afar to share this occasion. Thank you and may God bless his soul. |
Lawrence Aldridge Wilson, a Professor Emeritus at The UWI, passed away on December 2, 2013, after a short illness. He was 79.