For all of us, at whatever strata we live, episodes come along on our journey that transform us significantly purely from the realization or understanding those encounters generate. An intriguing part of the phenomenon is that the realization is not always immediate. Often it can take months, or even years, for the dawning or the understanding to come clear, but when it does one instantly sees the legitimacy of the awareness that has emerged. Two other intriguing aspects of these illuminations – that is essentially what they are – are their strength and their wide diversity.
For me, as an example, a pivotal one was my long acquaintance with a man named Ormond Panton whom I got to know over many years living in the Cayman Islands. At one time, he had been the most powerful politician in the country, forming its first political party, clashing with consecutive British administrators in the colony, and he had been known as a firebrand orator with his focus being independence for his country. “Mister Ormond,” as he was commonly known, was retired from all that when I met him, but he remained a firebrand with a sailor’s repertoire of cuss words, including a temper to match, and many Caymanians gave him a wide berth. His impact on me stemmed from his almost fanatical nationalism. Then and since I have not met anyone in whom that particular fire burned so brightly, and it was an illumination for me in how unflinching it was in the man; indeed, his intensity fortified my feelings for my own country while living in his. Without intending to do so, he was actually making a big difference in my own growth. (I would later recognize the same fierce loyalty to principle of Mister Ormond in the boxing phenomenon Muhammad Ali, another person I truly admire for the same reasons.) I eventually ended up writing the story of Mister Ormond’s life shortly before he passed away, and among the