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David Dabydeen writes on his father
Dear Editor;
I wish to pay tribute to my father, David Horace Sookram, who died a week ago, aged 86. He was a lawyer and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Economics. Like many Guyanese, he came from a lowly and deprived background , but his thirst for education saw him qualify as a village schoolteacher in Berbice, where he had a reputation as an inspiring teacher, but a very strict one, wielding his cane freely, as tutors did in the bad old days. After divorcing my mother in the early 1960s, he went to London to pursue his studies.
He started a new family. He worked as a teacher and studied in the evenings for his law degree at London University. In the 1960s and 1970s, there was much violence against immigrants. ‘ Nigger hunting’ and ‘Paki bashing’ were the pastime of the hooligan class. He would have had to endure various humiliating situations. On the occasions when he didn’t get any legal employment, he took humble jobs as a hotel worker, factory worker, or sought assistance from the English welfare system.
When he had money, he was lavish in entertaining folk, being an excellent cook, a lover of good rum and an avid card player. He would play for hours with his Chinese friends when they finished their restaurant duties and settled down for relaxing midnight- to-early- morning sessions of cardplay ( often for money). The years I spent with him in London saw many people from Guyana coming to stay in our house, sometimes for months on end. He was a generous and patient host.
After many years practising in England, he emigrated to Canada, where he gained a degree of fame for being one of the lawyers for Ben Johnson( the Olympic athlete who was stripped of his gold medal for failing a doping test). His progress from being a barefooted boy in Guyana, studying by lamplight, to being an eminent professional, is one that finds echo in the lives of many Guyanese. Such progress testifies to the Guyanese spirit of resilience, persistence, and ambition to achieve, in spite of the odds. Before he was bowled out my father had a long innings, ducking bouncers, trying to read the spin, and always aiming to reach the boundary, and beyond. A person with flaws and weaknesses, to be sure, but a remarkable man. I send my condolences to all who knew him and loved him.
David Dabydeen
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