Tributes to special fathers

Jun 15, 2014 News

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Godfrey Laton Andrews: We were so alike, nature had to take one of us  

While growing up I often heard the words, “the two of you cannot live together in this world; nature will

have to take one of you.”
They were words that were related to the relationship between my father and me.
At first I did not understand what they meant but when nature took my father away when I was 14 years old, it dawned on me that we had so much in common and there was not enough space for the two of us, at least not in our small two-bedroom home in North Ruimveldt.
I was at that age when most teenage boys begin to challenge authority, and being a Queen’s College student, (my father was an ordinary public servant) I thought I knew it all…and like all young men with growing independent minds who thought that they were too bright for their parents, I was beginning to feel that I was the man for the house.
Needless to say my father and I got into many arguments, but they were mostly over cricket…I challenged him on many things that had a lot to do with cricket records and so on.
My father made me love cricket….he encouraged me to listen to the radio commentary and would ask endless questions….I had to know the answers to them all if I was to maintain the edge over him that I craved at the time.
My father must have recognized my love for cricket for one of my early Christmas gifts was a cricket set, made up of a bat, ball and a complete set of stumps with bails.
But just when I was beginning to blossom into a good young cricketer, nature stepped in and took my father away. I was devastated and without his constant encouragement. Together with having to be a tower of strength for my grieving mother and two younger sisters, my desire to continue playing the game diminished and eventually died.
I believe that I made my father buy his first and only car. The year was 1980, the year that I earned a place at Queens College after successfully sitting the common entrance examination.
Since my father was in charge of the transportation section of a government ministry, I always had the privilege of being chauffeured to and from school by different drivers who were under his supervision.
But my father wanted the privilege of driving his young Queen’s College son to and from school…(so I was told). Although he could hardly afford it at the time, he went ahead and purchased the car for a whopping $7000.
It was a Vauxhall Viva and I soon realized that my father could have done better with the money that he spent on the car.
I remember the day my father died in my hands.
Before I forget, my love for Chinese food was nurtured by my father. I can recall many nights even while I was asleep, my father would wake me up by putting a piece of the chicken on my lips. I could not resist. To this day that part of my life has been passed down to my children…I still use the same strategy to wake them up sometimes.
(DALE ANDREWS)

Walter Ashmore Jordan: A love for language, a love for life

Most people who didn’t know my father well would listen to the way he spoke, and observe the way he acted, and assume

that Walter Ashmore Jordan was born into affluence.
That couldn’t have been further from the truth. By the time he was 12, his father had died and he had to leave school to take up a job as a postman to help his mother and siblings.
But I guess that my dad would have scoffed at the words of the Buju Banton song, “Circumstances made me what I am”.
His response to adversity was to educate himself. He took correspondence courses and passed his GCE O’ Level Exams, then enrolled in and graduated from the University of Guyana at a time when  some were deriding UG as ‘Jagan’s night school’.
He loved the English Language and proper enunciation. You couldn’t say ‘tree’ for ‘three’ and ‘dis’ for ‘this’ in his presence. (I still laugh at the time a burglar entered our home and while everyone was yelling ‘teef,’ in good Guyanese vernacular, Walter Ashmore Jordan put his tongue between his teeth and shouted ‘thief.’ I think even the ‘teef’ got a shock. No one had called him a ‘thief’ before).
Dad believed in loyalty but also believed in speaking his mind to the point of even once telling the ‘Comrade Leader’ ‘you are wrong’.
He also had a sense of fun. He loved boxing, and I believe that the entire block in our Tucville area knew when a boxing match was being televised from dad’s yells of encouragement. I remember my dad and me staying up after midnight, ears tuned to the radio, to listen to the first Ali-Frazier fight.
He loved to ‘tantalize’ and he loved to dance.
When good men pass away, it’s the good memories that stay.
(Michael Jordan)   
Eustace Williams: A quiet manliness

From the time she hit high school my sister, Faye, had a string of admirers. Many of them were stammering, tongue-tied, awkward boys, who often turned up at our home under the pretext of playing table tennis, while taking side-glances at my sister.
Unfortunately for my sister, she also had three ‘disgusting’ brothers who liked to tease her about her admirers and even found false names for many of them.
Then she went to the Cyril Potter College of Education, and met a tall, handsome, quiet, studious, football-loving, good-on the dance floor young man.
His name was Eustace Brindsley Williams, and from the time she introduced him to us, we knew that ‘Eusti’ was ‘serious business’.
Faye’s three ‘troublesome’ brothers looked at each other and said, “Gentlemen, a real man has come to town”.
In our minds, he was our brother-in-law even before he and my sister were married.
I watched them struggle, as most young couples initially do, to raise a family. I had no doubt that they would succeed and succeed they did.
I watched ‘Eusti’, with assistance from his very young sons, make cement blocks and almost single-handedly build the beautiful family home. I have never heard him raise his voice. His was a quiet manliness.
Brother Eusti left us suddenly and too soon this year.
But forever imprinted in my mind is an image of my ‘sugar-foot’ brother-in-law dancing with my youngest sister at her wedding, then later, dancing with his daughter, and taking the floor with my sister at their second son’s wedding.
Those are my good memories of a decent and excellent father and husband.
(Michael Jordan)

Eze Rockcliffe: The man in my life who can’t be replaced

Usually they say “mommy’s baby and daddy’s maybe” but in my case it’s different. I am daddy’s baby, and that status could never change.
There are so many things going on in the world and there are those days when I feel like the walls of the world are caving in on me; but the love and support of my family, headed by my dad, Eze Rockcliffe keeps me going.
I dread the moment when thoughts of my dad leaving me ever come to mind as I am not sure I can survive without him. I guess it’s because he was always there for me even when I didn’t deserve it.
Dad has taught me so many life lessons but one I can never forget is, “he who humbles himself will be exalted and he who exalts himself will be humbled.” Dad is the most humble person I know. Try as I might, I haven’t been able to perfect the art of humility but I am getting there.
I am the last of 13 children, and he cherishes us all just like we all cherish him.
If there are two things I know for sure, I won’t be getting any taller and my parents love me.
(Abena Rockcliffe)

Dennis Mc Intosh: The Walking library

Have you ever walked into a library? You would witness that there is a wide array of books on every possible topic

under the sun, an almost inexhaustible expanse of knowledge.
This is literally my father, Dennis Mc Intosh, the quintessential living, walking library. It would appear as though he had walked into a library and drank all of its contents. With the drop of a hat he can rattle off the entire history of the British people, from the Great Queen Victoria to the incomparable Elizabeth II. And  how about a little bit of Literature – Shakespeare is in the palm of his hands; some engineering perhaps – he can tell you the intricacies of any motor engine and is quite handy too, does his own plumbing, electrical work and carpentry…you get the picture.
Of his six children I’m the youngest and without a doubt the most troublesome (mildly speaking). Quite the disciplinarian, he is set in his ways, but like any great judge he always tempers justice with mercy. We don’t always see eye to eye on many issues and sometimes I get the feeling that we don’t agree on anything at all (there is indeed something like a generational gap). Nevertheless, there is one area of consensus: my drive to succeed and his desire and willingness to see me through, albeit using different methodologies (naturally). A father is a guide to a boy. He announces to a boy what he will become, how to chart your course through the chaos of masculinity to arrive at the destination that you have in you and without a father you might not get there. I’m proud of my father. Just as he has not allowed glaucoma to slow him down, age has not dampened his spirit; and it is here that I will proudly proclaim that I have the most wonderful father, and today I say, Happy Father’s Day Pops.
(Christopher Thompson)

Edgar Burchell Jordan: A disciplinarian and a sweet soul

My dad was Edgar Burchell Jordan (Snr.), aka ‘Gabby’, ‘Sir’ and ‘Edgar B’, just to name a few of his call names.
He was born on the 12th October, 1915, and left the land of the living on the 7th November, 2012.  He was the sweetest dad, very gentle, kind, and never wished ill of anyone, but at the same time was a disciplinarian, even though he refused doctor’s orders while he was ill (I guess it was a case of do what you we’re told and not as I do), and he nicknamed me (Nelly Victoria) since in his mind at that point in time I was acting as his mother.
At breakfast he would ask “if Guysuco had closed down, since his intake of sugar was reduced by the doctor and “soup, soup every day, that’s for sick people, what happen to the greens…”
However, growing up, I never heard him use any indecent language. Instead he would say ‘Kadaskit Maan’, meaning he was unhappy with you at that point in time.
Another very important thing to dad was “time”. He would usually say if you are not five minutes ahead of the time set, you are late.
However, being the last child (last in the jar, his words), my older siblings would say I got away with murder, so to speak, but that did not prevent me from obtaining good family morals and an education that I accredit to my dad.
May his sweet soul rest in peace.
(Sylvia Jordan)

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