(Barbados Nation) President of the Barbados Association of Retired Persons (BARP), Kathleen Drayton, is dead.
Drayton, a retired senior lecturer in the Department of Education at the Cave Hill Campus of the University of the West Indies (UWI), passed away on Monday at her Clerpark, St Michael home about 2.30 a.m.
An educator, social and political activist, Drayton came to Barbados from Guyana in 1973 to work at UWI.
She had been one of the driving forces in the development of the University of Guyana and had built a reputation there as a fearless advocate for women’s rights and social justice.
Her activism also took her to Jamaica, as well as to Ghana, where she rubbed shoulders with then President Kwame Nkrumah in the struggle against racism.
The former head of Women and Development Studies at UWI was one of the founding members of BARP in 1995, following her professional retirement. She initially served as secretary of the organisation and took up the presidency in 2005.
A lover of music, especially traditional calypso, Drayton was very active in improving the lot of the elderly and succeeded in having BARP enter into partnerships with several businesses to get discount arrangements on a number of consumer products and accessories.
Under her leadership, BARP’s membership blossomed to over 20 000, with spending powerat supermarkets alone in excess of $3 million monthly.
The organisation set up cells of advice on legal matters, had an assistance fund for members, and implemented a medical scheme to counter the inadequacies of other schemes, either because of high premiums, or incomplete coverage of the ailments of the aged.
Once asked about her many achievements in life, Drayton responded: “Life is a funny thing. You start out and you travel the road and what you do is determined by the circumstances at the time. I don’t think of things as achievements. I see them as things you get done.”
Noted Barbadian author George Lamming, a close friend of Drayton, said on Monday she was among the first recruitment of students at the Mona Campus in 1948. He added that over 50 years later she would be remembered as one of the most formidable intellects of the West Indies. “She was a brilliant teacher, and served the Caribbean in almost every territory as adviser and instructor,” he said.
Lamming said that more important than “our loss” was the example of service which she has left. BARP vice-president Ernest Batson described Drayton as one who had worked tirelessly in the cause of the elderly.
He said hers was an almost 24-hour labour of passion for her responsibilities.
He added that she perhaps took on more work than she should.
She leaves to mourn son, Richard, a historian resident in the United Kingdom, and daughter Allison, a lawyer, living in Australia.
