Think of a patrician and the image that comes quickly to mind is that of a member of ancient Rome’s aristocracy. Hence, patrician is a synonym for aristocrat in modern-day English usage.
But when Sir Richard “Johnny” Cheltenham, a former Cabinet minister, a member of Barbados’ Privy Council and one of the island’s legal luminaries, spoke in Brooklyn recently about the Patricians of Barbados, he was not focusing attention on aristocrats.
Instead, he was highlighting Barbadians, usually people of humble origins, who have risen to prominence through hard work and diligence and who trace the roots of their respective family trees to an area that stretches from St Patrick’s, Charnocks and Lead Vale in Christ Church, to Foursquare, St Philip.
Actually, Sir Richard used the term in a Christian and geographic sense as he formed the word from St Patrick’s.
“We have Patricians whose contributions to the public life of the country were out of all proportion to our numbers,” he said.
He cited Robert “Bobby” Morris, a highly respected former trade union leader who is now Barbados’ Ambassador to Caricom; Erskine Griffith, who headed the Civil Service for several years before becoming ambassador in Geneva and later Minister of Agriculture; and Lynette Eastmond, a member of the Owen Arthur Cabinet up to 2008.
And as if that wasn’t enough, when the Government changed hands four years ago, Arni Walters joined the David Thompson Cabinet. Now, add the names of Thelma Pollard, the chief make-up artist of Broadway’s longest running musical Phantom Of The Opera, L. B. Brathwaite and O’Brien Trotman, two former ministers, to the list and it would explain why Sir Richard was able to say “no other place in Barbados could claim that record”.
Engineers, educators, priests and pastors, entrepreneurs, physicians, attorneys and other hardworking and enterprising people are also on that list of Patricians.
Sir Richard was delivering the keynote address at a gala/dinner arranged by the St Patrick’s Heritage and Community Association, headed by Garvey Ince, president; Griffith, treasurer; Morris, first vice-president; Keith Gollop, assistant treasurer; secretary Anne Coppin-Carter, a public health nurse who lives and works in California; Jennifer Robinson, assistant secretary; and executive board members Kenny Bovell and Rev. Stephen Fields, an Anglican priest in Toronto.
“The list tells a part of the story of St Patrick’s and the Patricians,” said Sir Richard, the organization’s honorary patron.
The Heritage and Community Association was founded in 2008 with a straightforward mission: to provide assistance to disadvantaged persons in our community in the areas of education, health care and development.
To give meaning and purpose to that goal, it has donated scholarships to students in Barbados, financial assistance to several churches, schools and the Barbados Autism Association, and organized the highly successful 2010 community reunion in Barbados that attracted hundreds of Patricians now living in the United States, Canada, Britain and elsewhere.
