Remembering Cleveland Hamilton –Lawyer/Journalist/Broadcaster/War Veteran

Oct 05, 2019 News

He would have been 100 years old on Thursday. But on February 22, 1991, Cleveland Wycliffe Hamilton passed from time to eternity. He was 71.
But in his lifetime Hamilton was infinitely more concerned about the health of his beloved nation and people, and as a literary genius, he chronicled the life and aspirations of his fellow Guyanese with love, sensitivity and wry humour in print and broadcast media to modest acclaim.
In celebration of his life, as a family, there is the view that Hamilton’s contribution to the nation’s education and culture was legendary. His works were stylistically and intrinsically instructive, and vehemently nationalistic.
Hamilton wrote the words of the ‘Song of the Republic’ in 1970, and the epic prize-winning poem in which he defied Venezuela’s claim to Guyana – ‘Lines for a Frontier’ in 1981 — in one paragraph of which this poet laureate wrote: “We will not give a mandate that you rape the boundary line so late, In time’s twilight afternoon to do an autopsy on history, and exhume in the gloom, the wisdom of dead men”
Those are but two of his epic works that come to mind. On radio, he communicated with a masterly flamboyant flair. He however eschewed the trappings and traditional attitudes of greatness and success, and merely sought to enjoy the simple pleasures of life.
This World War Two Royal Air Force veteran overdosed on those simple pleasures and nurtured a fascination for Guyana’s natural beauty. Hamilton once wrote in a newspaper column – Sunday Chronicle circa September 1987, “The outstanding feature of the East Coast Demerara landscape is its proliferation of coconut estates. The vistas are spectacular, the swaying profusion majestic.”
His surviving 90-year-old wife Sheila, of Pennsylvania, USA, his sons Cosmo, Wayne, and Clifford; daughter Sharman, late son Stuart, grandchildren – proud lawyers, doctors, economists, and great grandchildren adored this modest icon.

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