Dear Editor,
Mr Leroy Small died a few days ago. I was told that he drove himself to a hospital in Georgetown, was admitted, but didn’t make it out. That he drove himself to the hospital does not surprise me – I knew him to be a calm, independent man.
When I was growing up in Dartmouth Village, Essequibo Coast, Leroy Small was a young Dartmouth-born teacher at Dartmouth’s St Barnabas Anglican Primary School. This school became Dartmouth Government School after Guyana became independent in 1966. The name was further changed to Eighth of May in 1978 to honour Dr Ptolemy Reid, a Dartmoutharian.
In the 60s, there was just a handful of Dartmouth-born teachers teaching at the primary school, and the whole village was usually happy for a villager who got a job there. I was quite excited about Leroy Small being a teacher at my school – he lived across the Essequibo Coast Public Road from our house, with his parents and siblings.
Not unusually, adult villagers and children called Leroy Small ‘Teacher Leroy’. Teacher Leroy initiated an after-school craft programme, which usually began around 4:30pm or later. That meant all those who were interested had time to go home, have something to eat or drink, and change their clothes before returning to school. Since I lived obliquely opposite Teacher Leroy, I often waited on our bridge that was over a trench between the edge of the road and the front of our yard. If not the bridge, I waited under our house that was six feet in the air on stilts. As soon as Teacher Leroy opened his front door, I hurried to join him.
The school had no electricity, so Teacher Leroy brought his own gas lamp. Depending on how late he left home, he lit the lamp before we got to the school, and the lamp was certainly glowing in the dark when we were walking home after the class. Teacher Leroy’s craft classes were conducted in a small room beneath the upper portion of the large one-room building, and many boys from different parts of the village attended. He taught us to bind loose leaf sheets of paper and cardboard covers to make notebooks and to finish the covers with decorative paper. We learned other crafts from him, including how to unwind the thick rope that anchors large boats to make floor mats. To this day, I remember how to perform the two named crafts and others I learned from Teacher Leroy.
Although we were sad to see Teacher Leroy leave, there was no one in Dartmouth who did not wish him well when he was accepted into the Guyana School of Agriculture in the mid-60s. The village was in euphoria when he graduated at the top of his class, winning a gold medal. After the GSA, Teacher Leroy studied abroad and became a respected agronomist and returned home to serve his country.
I was advised that he had retired but had been called back to work by the current government. That, to me, shows how highly regarded he was as an agricultural specialist.
Sadly, I haven’t met or communicated with Teacher Leroy since the days of his craft classes. Even sadder is that I had hoped to meet him later this year when I’m in Guyana. Hopefully, Teacher Leroy transitioned as calmly as he lived.
Yours faithfully,
Roy Brummell
