Joy, depth and passion for faith and family…Loris Heywood is a ‘Special Person’

Jun 29, 2014 News

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 “Whether a teacher at Central High in those years just after Queen’s, or at Ruimveldt Multilateral … or at UNDP, or at CARICOM, I have often said that sharing Christ is not my living; it’s my life.”

By Dennis Nichols

The concept of fatherhood is a common theme of the many discourses this week’s special person, Loris Heywood, shares

with his listeners, either from the pulpit of the Bethel Gospel Hall Church or via the television screen as a guest/co-host on the Saturday morning show ‘Man to Man’.
And whether the term refers to the Christian Biblical God or to the earthly parent, he is versed in the attributes of both, and their advocacy – as Pastor/Head of the Leadership Team at the Camp Street church, and as a father of the six children born to him and his wife Claudia, and nurtured by them over the 36-year span of their marriage.
Loris was born, and grew up, in Alberttown, Georgetown, the last of four children (and only son) born to Emile and May Heywood in 1951. He first attended Teacher Bourne’s Kindergarten School on Anira Street, before moving on to the Fountain A.M.E. School from which, at age 10, he received a McFarlane Cory Scholarship to attend Queen’s College in 1961.
Living a Christian life may have seemed an improbable goal for the long-limbed youngster during his early teenage years at Q.C. He intimated that the seven years he spent there could be divided into two distinct periods.
“The first five years were ones during which I acquired a reputation as something of a rebel … and in some quarters, a bad egg – somebody who was bright, but would not settle down, despite the urgings, yearnings and prayers of my family, especially my father,” he recalls with a hearty chuckle. He also acquired the nickname ‘Veet’ which had something to do with a clean haircut, a hair removal cream, and the French word for ‘speedily’. It was a sobriquet that followed him throughout his QC days, and long after he left that institution.
He adds that being in the same House, Cunningham, as then recent graduate Walter Rodney and several other outstanding alumni, he was often reminded of the scholastic heritage which he had become a part of, simply by being a QC boy, and especially, a Cunningham ‘K’ House member.
Nevertheless, he remembers what he calls ‘the excitement of going to Queen’s’ and the pride it took in its traditions such as its Cadet Corps, inter-House competitions and sports participation, which, he says gave its students wide exposure and helped them to be ‘stirred to rounded excellence.’
Then came the year 1966, bringing with it British Guiana’s independence, Loris’ entry into Sixth Form, and a big lifestyle change. The early part of that year saw him caught up in the excitement and euphoria of our country’s independence, to the possible detriment of his studies, swayed by the exhortations of his schoolmates that ‘GCE’s come twice a year, but independence is once in a

lifetime.’
Based on those considerations, he allowed himself a measure of nationalistic abandon coupled with the pride of seeing ex-QC Cadet Desmond Roberts raise The Golden Arrowhead one second after midnight on May 26 at the Queen Elizabeth (National) Park.
Then, during the August Holidays that year, he attended an inaugural Christian Youth Camp sponsored by the Young People’s Fellowship youth group at Goshen on the Essequibo River. It was there that young Loris was converted, as a born-again believer in Jesus Christ, and returned in September as a Sixth Form student no longer featured ‘on the negative register’ as he put it.
He said it was a conversion that shook QC, as some of his schoolmates thought it was an impossibility. One of his friends, a fellow named R.O. Campbell, actually told him, “Veet, anybody could become a Christian except you; before the end of the week you will be back with the boys.”
But there was no turning back. At that time QC had been experimenting with a Student Court, operating under the auspices of a student council, which ‘tried’ boys who seemed bent on delinquency, and sought to correct these undesirable inclinations.
Loris, who (like me) was once at the receiving end of these measures, found himself, now in the Lower Sixth form, appointed marshal of that very court, and later, in the Upper Sixth, became one of its prosecutors, as well as president of the school’s Bible Club. That, the lanky six-footer declared with a laugh, said something about the transformation which had occurred a year earlier.
Loris left Queen’s College as a prize-winning student in 1968, with three GCE ‘A’ level passes including a Distinction in Economics. By then, he was becoming very active in Christian evangelical youth activities with the international Inter-School/Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship, (IS/IVCF) seeking to reach young people across the socio-economic spectrum, in the process of which denominational barriers were transcended through clubs, camps and fortnightly youth rallies. Later, he also got involved in the Rosemary Lane Outreach Programme for youths in the North Cummingsburg (Tiger Bay) area of Georgetown, and was also part of a prison ministry in the late sixties and early seventies.
He continued his youth-focused evangelical pursuits after leaving Queen’s College and becoming a teacher at Central High School, from 1968 to 1972, and later at Ruimveldt Multilateral School from 1976 to 1986, during which he was adjudged Best Teacher at one of the school’s prize-giving exercises. And at the University of Guyana, he also received accolades as Best Graduating Student in the post-Graduate Diploma in Education Programme in 1983.

After leaving Ruimveldt Multilateral, Loris was employed as Senior Programme Assistant with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) from 1986 to 1989. His attachment to the UN body continued when he went to work at the CARICOM Secretariat in 1989 as Senior Staff Member with responsibility for UNDP-funded regional projects, and latterly, for Regional Human Resource Development Initiatives. With his attachment to the UNDP came also the opportunity to benefit from training in project design, implementation and evaluation. He retired from that agency in 2011.
Throughout his professional career in the various spheres of activity, runs a thread of evangelical outreach that ties everything he has done over the years into an integrated unit, a life’s work, if you will.
He declares, “Whether a teacher at Central High in those years just after Queen’s, or at Ruimveldt Multilateral … or at UNDP, or at CARICOM, I have often said that sharing Christ is not my living; it’s my life, so I’ve always been very involved whether as teacher, motivational speaker, Christian advocate on various radio and TV programmes … conferences, youth camps, workers’ groups, and other settings.”
Meanwhile at the Bethel Gospel Hall, Loris had moved up, from being a member of the leadership team there to being its head/pastor following the death of its previous leader, Pastor Lloyd Stewart, in 2008.
Looking at his work in the broader context of Christian living and evangelism, he observed that it is vital there exists what reformed Watergate felon Charles Colson called ‘a meaningful intersection between the kingdom of God and the kingdoms of men’, noting that in the affairs of men, God is never irrelevant, nor can be, so that if a message seems irrelevant, it means that we as messengers are dropping the ball somewhere, and there’s always a need to indicate that Heaven is constantly reaching out to Earth – a message that’s not merely timeless, but timely, and seeks to show the relevance of Jesus Christ to every area of life.
With Father’s Day just having been observed, I asked Loris to reflect on his role as father to his six children, as well as that of guest, with Pastor Marlon Hestick, on the informative and analytical Saturday morning TV programme, ‘Man to Man’, a presentation that often deals with the recurring theme of the role of the male figure in children’s lives, with obvious relevance to our Guyanese society, and to the wider region.
With reference to the latter, he noted the dearth of fathers and father figures, quoting from George Lamming’s “In the Castle of my Skin’ when the principal character, G, observes that it was his mother who fathered him and not his father who ‘only fathered the idea of me.’
Loris adds that, “In a region (the Caribbean) where manhood is so precious, but in a sense so underestimated, undervalued, and not fully understood even by us (men) it is a real privilege to be sharing alongside Marlon, someone who has a true sense of what it means not merely to represent Jesus, but to ‘re-present’ him in all his authenticity; acknowledging that he (Jesus) is both affirming manhood and celebrating fatherhood through identification with God, who shares with us the name ‘Father’.”
He says the role of fathers in the care and upbringing of their children is extended to national life, with reference to a biblical passage, in the Book of Malachi, where it is stated, ‘He (the prophet Elijah) will turn the hearts of the fathers to their children, and the hearts of children to their fathers; otherwise I (God) will come and strike the land with a curse.”
With this scripture in mind, Loris asserts that he sees family life in general, and father-children relationships in particular, as the key to national meaning and national destiny; in fact he themed his recent Father’s Day sermon, ‘Family Life and Fatherhood: Keys to National Blessedness.’
Where his own children are concerned, his closeness to them and obvious pride in the way they have turned out, is almost palpable. He uses adjectives such as ‘outstanding’, ‘versatile’ and ‘committed’ to describe the two girls (Marise and Loria-mae) and four boys (Luke, Joel, David and Christopher) ranging in age from 33 to 23, who appear well on their way to realizing their own goals of living fulfilling and spiritually-rewarding lives.
Two of the children, Marise and Luke are married, with Marise and her husband Gardy giving the Heywoods their first grandchild.
Marise works in the U.S. as a Clinical Manager, coordinating in-home patient care among various health disciplines, with direct oversight for a team of nurses and patients. Luke is an Admissions Councilor for the Macaulay Honors College Programme at the City University of New York (CUNY).
Joel, an electrical engineer, is presently a full-time Teaching Staff Worker within the IS/IVCF in Guyana, while Loria-mae is completing her Master’s in Developmental Studies in Switzerland. The two youngest, David and Christopher, are majoring in Dentistry and Medicine respectively, at the Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Guyana.
When asked to recall the high point or high points of his life thus far, our special person indicated somewhat predictably his conversion in 1966, his marriage to Claudia Cromwell, a former French teacher, in 1977, and the birth of his children. He reserved a special kind of eloquence when speaking about his wife, whom he married after a courting relationship that began, rather than ended, with a proposal of marriage in April 1973.
Referring to her as the love of his life and relishing the opportunity to introduce her as his ‘queen’, Loris observed that as Guyana celebrated its republic status, he would proudly announce that ‘In a republic, you don’t often get a chance to meet royalty.’
As I spoke with Loris Heywood, a sense of the joy, the depth, and the passion he expresses for his faith and his family resonate clearly. It is there in both his spontaneous laughter and in the wisdom of the scriptural and philosophical adages he seems to have a penchant for quoting. It is there in the careful choice of a word or phrase he considers most apt for the moment. It is there even in the thoughtful silence between words as he ponders a response to some probing question. And it’s there in the way everything he says and does is underpinned by his Christian ethic. As he professes, “Sharing Christ is not my living; it’s my life!”

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