IN EVERYONE’S life there are messages from the life of another that take root and resonate.
Trevor “Job” Clarke and I met in the desperate days of the early 1980s when the Caribbean dream that was Maurice Bishop was carved up to become our collective nightmare. He spoke. I listened. I admired. Our friendship never fractured. Sincerity was his hallmark. He spoke his truth. His mind was always made up.
I sensed that he was a giant whose mentality was trapped in the restricted imagination of our still undecided nation. He travelled the region and wanted for its people the best that democracy could deliver. He wanted economic justice for the disenfranchised African community. But he desired more than any other thing a level playing field for all involved in entrepreneurship. An equal chance, he would always say, is all he wanted. But such a simple idea, he knew, was a mountain to climb.
He was an industry innovator whose tortured story details his inability to reach the critical take-off every manufacturer knows can only be attained with a leg up from government and fair financing from the fiscal fraternity.
In developed market economies, men of his vision generally do well. With their creative capacity, government’s backing and a supportive funding environment, these wealth-makers have shaped cultures and futures. Barbados is much the poorer because it found no way to convert his ideas and efforts into respected operational option. How easy it is for victims to persist in blaming fellow victims. The victors smile at the sight of the carnage.
My admiration for him, however, transcends his professional identity as a businessmen to the bone. It was his compassion for the less fortunate, and his absolute dedication to the progressive forces that worked to further the ongoing democracy movement.
He attended every public debate. He sponsored the operational costs of many events – paying rental fees, printing T-shirts, and supplying trophies and banners. He allocated scare resources to support struggles he believed in. In this regard, he never rejected his comrades. He found a way. He was a way.
But it was his developed humanity that spoke to us all. We, the wider world, knew him as loud and bellowing, but soft and caring. This was his method and mood. He was a big, bold mind that carried many along a gentle, discursive path.
We shed tears on hearing the narrative of his experiences. He was the metaphor; the symbol of the crisis facing the blacking community that has won the political battle and is about to lose the economic war. He was the inspiration for the generation that came after him.
Such a man is hard to die. Bodies fast fade but legacies linger. Clarke is chosen to sail in the ark of ancestors as a special species for the future even though he is one of a kind, and cannot be paired.
I can hear him still. I can see the singular tower he is. Who has failed to be fascinated by his sizzling smile that melts any stiffness it sees and brings to every space a glow of gracious greeting?
Blessings our brother. Go well.
– Sir Hilary Beckles
