Dear Editor,
Born in April 1939 within days of each other, VYK and I lived our early years as next yard neighbours in Middle Street, Georgetown on the north side between East and Cummings streets.
After both entering the middle school of QC in 1955, we were destined to continue in our later working life that close relationship that developed in the earlier years. He preceded me to the UK in the early sixties when a number of our colleagues including Herman Boscoe Rohlehr, Earl John and Gus Lee among those still in Guyana, were like myself awarded Booker cadetships. The specialised training received at selected tertiary institutions was designed to equip the awardees with the relevant skills to take up key positions in the country’s important businesses, thus heralding the Guianisation of the management of the Booker holdings.
On his return to BG in 1962, VYK was appointed Agronomist at Wales Estate where I later joined him in conducting those early field experimentation, the results of which proved to be of strategic agronomic importance in sustaining development of the then vibrant sugar industry. He subsequently became the first Guyanese to head the Cane Breeding Station, at that time located at Sophia at the back of the Botanic Gardens. The titled Guyana Sugarcane Experiment Station, GSES, was later relocated under his oversight and stewardship to LBI and renamed GARU (GuySuCo Agricultural Research Unit) encompassing PPU, the Plant Protection Unit, in a comprehensive restructuring of the sugar cane research function, an engagement in which I was an integral part.
VYK was in the forefront of smut and rust disease varietal screening work in the seventies when the control methodology established by the research unit successfully removed the threat of smut and other debilitating diseases from decimating the cane industries in Guyana and the wider Caribbean. I remember traveling with him to Cuba along with Bob Bhim, the corporation’s then PPU Manager to make a presentation (through interpreters of course) to Cuba’s sugarcane scientists, on collaboration in smut and rust disease control. It was primarily for the outstanding work done on smut control management that VYK was honoured with the distinguished Golden Arrow of Achievement national award in 1979.
His appointment as Executive Director of Agriculture on the Board of GuySuCo, the first Guyanese to attain that position, was fitting recognition and reward for his distinguished sterling service to the sugar industry in Guyana as well as his outstanding contribution to cane breeding in the Caribbean. He served as Guyana’s representative on the West Indies Cane Breeding Station’s Management Committee for many years.
He was a great fly fisherman and apart from his many successes with lukanani on the Lama conservancy, he once netted a 15 lb gilbacker off the Liliendaal foreshore, for which, on the basis of the registration of his fishing equipment, he received an international angler’s award. He continued with his love for fishing when family commitments caused his early retirement to Florida in the mid-eighties, before increasing health issues in later years restricted and ultimately brought an end to his deep sea ventures.
My sincere condolences and that of my three sons are extended to his three children Kevin, Charmaine and Martin, as well as his siblings, who are all residing in North America.
May his soul rest in peace, and I would not be surprised that from his perch in the grand lodge above, he is now wistfully saying, “I’m ahead of you again.”
Yours faithfully,
Fritz C McLean
Board Director of GuySuCo
and Diversification
Specialist of SPU