QRC’S HALL OF HONOUR

The inducting last evening of 18 former Queen’s Royal College (QRC) students, headed by this country’s President, Professor George Maxwell Richards, into the QRC Hall of Honour, must be seen not merely as a salute to graduates who have distinguished themselves in various fields, but as a challenge to present day Royalians to aim at being achievers. The inductees, many of whom won not only national but international recognition in such areas as education, law, diplomacy, choreography, theatre, dance, Test cricket and athletics at the Olympics level, are positive role models to the nation’s youth. And this is what the country’s young people, all too many of whom have been morally derailed, desperately need at this time — exemplars! This is the second time since the QRC’s Hall of Honour was created by the QRC Old Boys’ Association that persons have been inducted into it. The first was in 2000, when 14 Old Boys and a former Master, a non Royalian, Grant Elcock Pilgrim, were honoured.

The group had included a number of “firsts” — Dr Eric Williams, first Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago; Dr Rudranath Capildeo, the country’s first Leader of the Opposition; Dr Arthur H McShine, the Association’s first President; Sir Vidia Naipaul, TT’s first Nobel Prize winner, and Dr Charles Vernon Gocking, QRC’s first Master with an External Bachelor of Arts Degree, obtained 65 years ago. This year’s inductees also include several  new “firsts”: Karl Hudson-Phillips QC, the first national to be appointed a Judge to the recently created International Criminal Court; Rev Clive Abdulah, the first national to be made (Anglican) Bishop of Trinidad; Geoffrey Holder, the first Trinidadian to stage a Broadway musical — The Wiz; and Peter Minshall, the first national to receive an Emmy Award. The significance of the Queen’s Royal College Hall of Honour into which carefully selected outstanding former students are inducted, clearly goes beyond the mere ceremony and the applause. The process of honouring these Old Boys, particularly if properly marketed to present day students of the College, can be a vehicle to motivate them — and even for young graduates to upgrade their efficiency. Hopefully, it can serve to encourage the country’s students, generally, to believe that they, too, can excel, and that other Presidents, ICC Judges, Church Heads, Wendell Mottleys, “Scotty” Lewises, top Test cricketers of the quality of Deryck Murray and the late Jeffrey Stollmeyer and Gerry Gomez, more Nobel Prize winners and more leading statesmen are waiting to emerge from among them.