Celebrating the UWI’s profound impact on its 75th anniversary

Editor: The University of the West Indies (UWI), originally called The University College of the West Indies, celebrates 75 years of existence this year. We congratulate, celebrate and thank this institution for all that it has accomplished thus far. It started out as an institution to train medical doctors. Over time it has evolved.

It has managed to not only educate many but at the same time to create a social revolution. Many alive today still recall the early years of UWI and the earliest students who set off for the Mona campus from St Vincent. They were few and they were brilliant. The late Dr Kenneth John would certainly have been recalling and writing about that era were he still here with us. He was not only a graduate of UWI but also very much part of the UWI Extra Mural history in St Vincent.

When UWI celebrated 60 years in 2008, Kenneth named some of the first Vincentian students to go off to University.

He mentioned Dr Kenneth Antrobus and his sister, Jacqueline Antrobus, and went on to elaborate in an article in ‘The Vincentian’ of 2/21/2008 accordingly: “I went to UWI in 1960 preceded, in order, by persons such as Elaine Gatherer -Connell, Norma Ince Keizer, and Winston Baptiste.

Numerically speaking, we went up in a fairly decent batch. With Wallace Dear and Michael Joshua, we formed the very first Vincentian Social Science students, funding our own way as scholarships were reserved for the arts in those days.

In my group were Baldwin King who went on to record a First Class Honours degree in chemistry, Cedric Harold, Leroy Mulraine, Jeanette Ballantyne-France, Joyce Peters–Mc Kenzie, Castine Quashie, Errol King, Errol Daisley, Celitha Wiltshire-Davy and others.

We were greeted by my school-mate medics Bob Sutton, Carlos Mulraine, and Albert Lockhart who went on to distinguish himself in the field of ophthalmology, using the ganja as base for eye-cures.”

I recall that Cynthia Hunt-Richards, our Mathematics teacher at GHS, went to UWI around that time.

Baldwin returned to the University of the West Indies in Mona, Jamaica, to teach in 1971, having attained his Ph.D in Chemistry from UCLA/Berkeley in 1969.

I was struck, immediately, by the camaraderie that existed amongst the former students and found the loyalty and common desire they shared to give back to the Caribbean remarkable.

We stand on the shoulders of so many. Thank you so much. Congratulations, again.

Cheryl Phills King