SUNDAY 6 AUGUST, 2017 – UWI TODAY
3
The Alma Jordan Library is often seen as the silent
home of academia, inaccessible and unwelcoming to the
public.Those days are past. It would be a wonderful thing to
see exhibitions, performances, book launches, and readings
taking place within and without its premises. There are
several museums at the campus; we need our corporate
citizens to see them as spaces to rekindle interest in our
society. We need our libraries and museums to come alive
because our histories have predisposed us to amnesia, and
they are the best sites to remind us of ourselves.
On the first day of the Exhibition that Hasely Crawford
attended, scores of people thronged the Undergraduate
Reading Room to meet the affable hero, clad appropriately
in a dazzling gold shirt, as he mingled and signed
autographs.
One little boy, no more than six or seven, tugged
impatiently at his mother’s hand. “Look de gold medal!” he
kept saying, his eyes glued on the shiny trophy.
What has it taken for NGC to foster these meaningful
relationships with the community it lives and works in?
How has the Bocas Lit Fest managed to thrive so well in a
place where we say people no longer read?
It is because the Lit Fest has been a site where the heroes
of the world of writing have been brought out and dusted
off and put within reach. They have been made into living,
reachable, creatures of this world, not shadowy figures from
the land of unattainable dreams.
And that is the value of having a hero in your midst.
Did Hasely Crawford set out to be a hero? Did Patrick
Patterson? Were they two young, working class boys from
the country who loved to run and play and found a talent
in their hobby?WhenHasely burst onto the scene, he found
support, when Patterson did, he found a world that he still
thinks is trying to get him.
“Heroism comes in different forms,” said Wendell
Mottley.
Perhaps heroes are the ones who find it inside
themselves to reach out and lift the little ones right up to
the pinnacle of their dreams.
VANEISA BAKSH
Editor
EDITORIAL TEAM
CAMPUS PRINCIPAL
Professor Brian Copeland
DIRECTOR OF MARKETING AND COMMUNICATIONS
Dr Dawn-Marie De Four-Gill
EDITOR
Vaneisa Baksh • email:
CONTACT US
The UWI Marketing and Communications Office
Tel: (868) 662-2002, exts. 82013 / 83997 or email:
students in track and field and basketball. On their
website, NGC says, “Since its inception in 1999, the NGC
Right On Track Development Programme has benefited
more than 15,000 participants in 105 communities
and eight institutions; it has trained 88 coaches and
it has formed and/or restored seven athletic clubs. Its
impact is evidenced by the many coaches who have seen
results in the form of improved athletic ability, pride in
achievement and character development.”
That’s impressive, and it is not the only evidence of
CSR from the Company. Their website lists a series of
sponsorships: three steelbands, the Bocas Lit Fest, Sanfest,
partnering with Habitat for Humanity, partnering with
The UWI.They epitomize good corporate citizenship. To
my mind, it is partnering with communities by investing
in their development that helps foster the feeling of
belonging that makes people want to do good and build
rather than break down their environments.
At the launch, NGC CEO, Mark Loquan
acknowledged that our greatest wealth is our people.
“To know our heroes is to know ourselves: our
values, our collective history, who we are, and what
makes us as Trinbagonians, great. Recognising our
heroes is an acknowledgement of who we are as a people.
We are not waiting for the rest of the world to validate
our heroes, or until it is too late,” he said. “This is the
reason for the NGC National Heroes Project.”
The Hasely Crawford Legacy is the first of a series
called INVICTA, where NGC will celebrate a national
hero annually.
The exhibition that was launched is going to be
housed at the Alma Jordan Library here at the St.
Augustine Campus for two weeks.Then it will take to the
road in the kind of mobile caravan set-up that I assume
is the way the Right On Track Programme has managed
to hit 105 communities.
It is something corporate T&T needs to get on board
with. It is no good pointing fingers of blame at the public
institutions as if they alone must shoulder the burden
of building and development. Within its institutional
framework, The UWI has expertise in practically every
discipline. Corporation cooperation is the healthy way
to go.
An article from the
Indian
Express
was sent to me recently,
a terribly disquieting piece on
Patrick Patterson, the Jamaican
fast bowler who was arguably
one of the fastest ever to play
cricket for the West Indies. An
Unquiet Mind, written by Bharat
Sundaresen, describes how
difficult it was to track down
Patterson amidst a sea of rumours
that he was lost, homeless, mentally ill, destitute. They
finally meet and for four hours at a waterfront bar they talk
about a range of things, including “dark days that were as
dark as midnight,” from which he has not yet recovered.
Sundaresen had been trying to meet Patterson since
1987, and every time he returned to the Caribbean he would
keep looking, until it became something of an obsession
to find the man who was one of his heroes. “It was like the
West Indies had not just given up on, but forgotten, one of
their superstars of yore,” he wrote.
Patterson’s story is familiar – a talented young country
boy making it to the big times, but uncomfortable with the
transformations it brings. He feels like an outsider all of the
time and soon, there are disciplinary issues. He falls away
and practically disappears, drifting into a shadowy world
that seems dominated by paranoia.
Sundaresen asks what his hero has been doing over
the last 25 years.
“Absolutely nothing. Nothing that promotes good
living,” is the 55-year-old’s response.
Is Patterson yet another fallen hero? And if he is, was
he pushed? And if he was pushed what were the forces that
pushed him, and what might have possibly saved him from
this life of perpetual midnight?
“Heroism comes in different forms,” says Wendell
Mottley. He is recounting that historic July 24 of 1976,
when Hasely Crawford won a Gold medal in Montreal,
the first Olympic gold medal for Trinidad and Tobago. A
100m medal in 10.06. (Ten years later the little baby Bolt
was born and he would clock 9.58 in an epoch of his own)
“Back on that July day in 1976, every TV set,
handheld radio and rum shop audience across Trinidad
and Tobago was tuned to the Olympics and cheering
on their countryman – hoping and praying for Hasely’s
victory,”Wendell told his rapt audience. “There were 66,308
spectators packed in the stadium. There was a hush as the
athletes came under starter’s orders. BAM, shot call, race
GONE and in a 10.06 second flash, Hasely Crawford races
into His-Story and becomes an enduring hero of Trinidad
and Tobago.”
Wendell is an Olympian himself – 1964 Tokyo –
bringing home silver in the 400m and a bronze in the
4x400m relay. A dozen years before Hasely, he had been
on an Olympic track. He could talk about what it meant
to prepare, to compete, to find acclaim and then have to
live with it.
So here he was giving the feature address at the launch
of an exhibition to honour Hasely Crawford’s achievements
– and while it would be more specific to say achievements
of 40 years ago, I think it is more accurate to say for over
40 years – as Mr Crawford has contributed unstintingly to
national development since then.
He had been inspired to run as fast as he could by
the sheer determination to break out of the poverty he
knew as a child. Unlike Patrick Patterson, he had found
people to support him, and so his energy did not drag him
underground into dark, shadowed places, it lifted him into
the light.
So the National Gas Company joined with him and
together they have done a lot to help nurture young
people. The one everyone knows is the Right on Track
Programme, teaching primary and secondary school
FROM THE EDITOR
Heroes in an Ocean of Amnesia
“To know our heroes is to know ourselves: our values, our collective history,
who we are, and what makes us as Trinbagonians, great. Recognising our
heroes is an acknowledgement of who we are as a people. We are not waiting
for the rest of the world to validate our heroes, or until it is too late,”
NGC CEO, Mark Loquan
