The headline in the Express was factual and dry. It read, “Former UWI lecturer Trevor Farrell dies”. And as I recovered from the shock of reading that news, I wondered if the person writing the headline had any idea who Trevor was or could even begin to imagine the heavy blow to the spirit that such news would have delivered to people like me.
Just the facts, please, just the facts. And that is all we got from the article which accompanied the headline. The first two paragraphs read “former senior lecturer at the University of the West Indies (UWI) Dr Trevor Farrell died on Thursday night at the St Augustine Private Hospital. Farrell, 67, the brother of former deputy Central Bank governor and One Caribbean Media (OCM) chief executive officer Terrence Farrell had lectured at the university for more than 30 years.”
That was it. A life summed up in those few words and, apparently, deserving of those few only because of a fraternal relationship with the former chief executive officer of One Caribbean Media.
And as I struggled to make sense of this, to me, inexplicable lack of due appreciation, I was plunged into a deep sense of gloom. For I had to accept that the reporter who wrote the article and the headline-writer who crowned it simply did not know who Trevor Farrell really was and the service he had given to this our native land.
Perhaps they were too young to know or remember, perhaps they were not fortunate enough to have passed through his hands at UWI, or perhaps, their frame of reference which would guide them as to who or what was news of significance was totally different from mine.
And it was on that last thought that my gloom descended. For I thought of Lloyd Best, and Allan Harris, and Dennis Pantin, and Trevor Boopsingh, and Desmond Allum, and Sheila Solomon, and Angela Cropper, and Pat Bishop and the entire pantheon of patriots, named and unnamed, among whom Trevor now takes his place, and wondered if they had lived and worked and struggled and died for nothing.
I use the term “patriot” even though I am aware it has developed around itself a rather unsavoury set of connotations. Particularly in the United States of America its use has become identified with a rather rabid militarism and the political rhetoric of scoundrels.
But there was a time when the term referred simply to a person who loved, supported and defended his or her country and its interests, not uncritically but with devotion. And for many of us in Trinidad (and the wider Caribbean) who were born amid all the intensity of the decolonisation movement and the birth pangs of political independence, the term “patriotism” also included the idea of service to our country in whatever sphere we found ourselves.
For such patriots—as I wrote in my tribute to my friend, Dennis Pantin—came to understand and accept that the dream of nationhood would not fall into our laps, but “had to be built by toil and effort and hard work”. These patriots “accepted that theirs was the responsibility to shape the dream in whatever way they could and to pass it on to the next generation”.
And finally these patriots “understood that in so doing there would neither be glory nor riches nor even assurances of success, but they did it because they understood that was what had to be done if ever the dream [were] to become reality”.
That is what it meant to be a patriot to those of Trevor’s generation and mine. It was not even a term by which we defined ourselves. We just knew what we had to do and operated in that context. Nor did we always agree with each other. Far from it.
The arguments and disagreements among ourselves were legion and at times even more passionately waged than those we had with the political establishment.
But in all that raging ferment of disputation, never did we doubt or question each other’s fundamental motivation—the love of our country and the desire to build it into a secure and viable nation.
Trevor was exceedingly bright and, some said, exceedingly arrogant. But he never hesitated when the time came and the opportunity presented itself to enlist his services on behalf of the country. He served as a key economic advisor to the National Alliance for Reconstruction regime and was chairman of Trintopec from 1986 to 1991.
Maybe it is all a question of my ageing perspective. But I knew Trevor just as I knew all those in the pantheon of patriots, and I had taken comfort in the knowledge and the assurance that as long as he and others like him remained alive there was hope for our country.
But as the numbers left dwindle down to a precious few before they disappear altogether, that blessed assurance evaporates and I grieve for my homeland.
Fare thee well, my brother. I salute your service to our country.
• Michael Harris has been for many years a writer and commentator on politics and society in Trinidad
and the wider Caribbean.