Burrell. son of a land baron

The decades of the 80s and 90s in Jamaica were, for all practical purposes, lost decades. The bitter ideological conflict which marked the 70s and the national movement it fermented, had given way to the rule of every man for himself and preoccupation with the need to survive the harsh economic climate. Jamaicans were reluctant even to stand for the National Anthem, and the black, green and gold flag, which should symbolise the cherished ideals of a proud nation, was hardly worth the cloth on which it was draped.

Indiscipline was rampant and productivity in the doldrums. At one stage, and in utter frustration, Prime Minister Edward Seaga was moved to chastise the business community, describing them as "producers of words and manufacturers of excuses". A change of government to the charismatic Michael Manley did not bring about any significant change in social mores. Truly, it seemed, Jamaica had lost its very soul. But in the midst of the despair, there was one man who had a vision. He had been a soldier in the Jamaica Defence Force and he was a man who could dream.

Years before that, Lieutenant Horace Garfield Burrell had seen a newspaper headline which shouted: "Boys' Town drill soldiers". It was a cute headline but it had cut to the core of Burrell's being. The soldiers, some of whom were under his command, were being humiliated before the nation. He took control of the football squad and guided them to victory and the premier league trophy, symbol of football supremacy in Jamaica. It had never happened before and has never happened since. But it foretold an unlikely event that would set Jamaican football on a path to unimagined glory.

As the 90s were drawing to a close, Burrell would look at Jamaican football and dream that it could reach the top. In the age of the Inquisition, he would have been burnt at the stake for uttering such a madness and audacity. When you think of it, Jamaica had no business going to the World Cup, given the impossible state of the country's football infrastructure. But it was a dream that would set a country ablaze with goose-pimpling pride and re-ignite the dying embers of nationalism, gushing over like a flood into the far reaches of the Jamaican Diaspora.

One man's dream became the vision of a nation. And in 1998, Jamaica, mere minnows, ran onto the World Cup football field in Paris with giants the likes of Argentina; beat the team from the world's second most powerful economy, Japan; and placed ahead of the world's only superpower, the USA, at the pinnacle of global soccer.
How then could anyone tell that in a matter of a few years, this same man - who had received a national admiration reserved for heroes, won his country's fifth highest honour, the Commander of the Order of Distinction and gained football's greatest accolade, the Order of Merit from soccer's governing body, FIFA - would suffer so undignified a defeat among people who had basked in the glory born of his vision and determination?

They say of Burrell that he is a tough and unyielding negotiator, a man endowed with a sizeable helping of Jamaican braggadocio and that as soccer glory crowned the island, his stride became bigger than football itself. But even Burrell's fiercest critics admit it is unlikely any of it would have happened at all without his iron determination, steely focus and supreme self-confidence.
Those self-same reserves of strength and resolve would have to serve him only a couple years later when Burrell's true mettle and character would be tested way beyond a football federation election defeat. As two hapless murderers snuffed out the life of his first son, Taj, with whom he shared a rare father-son relationship - "We were best friends" - Burrell would feel his world collapse around him. And he would not understand how anyone could harm one hair on the head of the son of a man who had only a couple of years before released such orgasmic joy in an emotionally starving nation. The intriguing story of Horace Burrell is one for the annals of Jamaican history. We'll begin in May Pen, the Clarendon capital where he was born, the third son of a land baron.

Farm stories and simple people

On February 8, 1950, Edward and Linda Burrell were probably hoping for a girl after having had two sons - Edward Maurice and Carlton Lloyd. After all, how could they know that this new baby would bring the family such fame and ensure the name Burrell a special place in their country's history? Whatever might have been their preference, they lovingly welcomed the new bundle of joy and named him Horace Garfield.
Even by today's standards, Edward Burrell was one of Jamaica's biggest farmers, and certainly was the biggest tobacco grower in Clarendon. He was head of a family property, Oaks estate, inherited from his father, Joseph Burrell and which bordered four townships stretching from Lucky Valley to Coxwain to Suttons and on to Rock River. The land was fertile in sugar cane, citrus and tobacco, and cattle grazed for several hundred acres. Many subsistence farmers tilled the land, growing cash crops. In the riverbed which ran across the property, sand-mining was a major activity. Young Horace grew up as a farm boy. He spent time between the farm and a house in May Pen that his father acquired for breaks away from the farm. There were many happy and exciting days with his brothers and a cousin, Weldon 'Pat' Maddix, who grew up with the family. They watched the farmers at work and heard their amusing, sometimes sad stories of life. Burrell learnt to appreciate their simple life and their generous disposition.
He recalls that his mother was always there to care for the children. She had taught for a short time after passing the 3rd Jamaica Local exam, but gave that up to become a tower of strength to her husband as he managed so large an enterprise. Curiously, the Burrell children did not call their parents "mommy" or "daddy". They called them "mother" and "father". So did the rest of the community. They were strict parents and moral values were central to their existence. Church was "every Sunday" at St Gabriel's Anglican, May Pen.

Omar Davies, Bobby Pickersgill et al

At age 11, Burrell passed the Common Entrance Exam and went to Clarendon College under principal C L "Pops" Stuart and later John MacMillan. His brother Carlton was at the newly-created Glenmuir High with one Omar Davies, a finance minister-in-the-making and "whom I got to know from he was in short pants", Burrell muses. Maurice, his other brother, had been sent to school in England, where they had many close relatives. At Clarendon College, Burrell was a 'little boy' to big boys like Robert Pickersgill, now minister of transport and works, his brother Tony Pickersgill and the girl, Fay, whom Tony would marry after many years of 'rent-a-tile' dancing. Among Burrell's other peers were: Gladstone Bonnick; Raymond Wright; Norton Hinds; and Glenroy Miller.

Burrell was involved in almost every extra-curricular activity at school, especially enjoying football (he made the school's Under-14 team for the Galloway Cup), cricket, camera club and the debating society. But there was nothing to him like the cadet force. So engrossed was he that he soon began to ignore the other activities to concentrate on the cadets, loving to teach the younger boys map reading, rifle shooting and other disciplines. He attained the rank of drum major in the cadet force at school, something he had day-dreamed about from younger days when he saw the drum corps leading the school's annual Founder's Day parade from Rose Bank through the town of Chapleton and fancied himself at the head of it. He was selected two years in a row by the Jamaica Combined Cadet Force to represent Jamaica in cadet exchanges with Canada and Trinidad and Tobago. To anyone looking on, it wasn't hard to see that Burrell had already found his calling in life. He would one day be a soldier.
"From those early days I had a strong sense of discipline. I believed in being disciplined, tough and daring. I was a very adventurous person," he reflects. But after 'A' Levels, Burrell wasn't immediately clear on what he would do with his life. As fate would have it, he went to hang out for a while with his brother, Carlton, who by now was working as an engineer at the Revere and Alpart bauxite-alumina plants. There he met Carlton's engineer and school-master friends, including Ryland Campbell, the current chairman of Capital and Credit Merchant Bank and who was teaching at St Elizabeth Technical High School (STETHS). Campbell told him he seemed to be a fine young man and would probably do well at teaching. The STETHS principal, John Pottinger, was looking for someone to teach Biology and Agricultural Science. Burrell had done both at Clarendon College and liked the idea. But he was totally bowled over when Pottinger, at the end of the interview, told him he was hired immediately! "I was dumbstruck, excited and scared all at once because most of the boys there were about my age," he says. But everything fell into place, once he had started. One of his outstanding students, he recalls, was Garfield Myers, the current sports editor at the Observer newspaper.

They murdered my boy

STETHS would be memorable too for the fact that he met Lourea Simpson and was immediately smitten. She was a student then, but about five or six years after school, the relationship blossomed into a raging love affair. He married her in 1976 and the union produced a daughter, Tiffany, who is doing her PhD at Yale, after her Masters at Howard University; and a son, the late Taj Burrell, whose death exposed the soft inner core under the seemingly tough exterior of his outstanding father. Taj had gone to live with his dad after the marriage ended in divorce. They had the kind of father-son relationship that most boys only dream of. "He was my little brother, my best friend and so his brutal murder was devastating," says Burrell, his face a mask of grief. "But closure is just now coming since his two murderers have been convicted and sentenced to death."
These days, Burrell has transferred all the love to Romario, his gifted eight year-old second son. He was named after the Brazilian football whiz who has given him his shirt and played host to him at dinner. Recently, Romario led his school science team to victory in a competition and has been called on to read for his Roman Catholic Church congregation. The proud father forgets this is his interview! "I love him dearly," he confesses.

A soldier's training

But before Burrell had left STETHS, he was inching ever closer to a career in the defence force. He had been placed in charge of the school's cadet squad at the rank of second lieutenant. At this point, he had no doubt that he wanted to be in the military, and the passion was growing. Sure enough, he applied to the JDF and enthusiastically took on the physical endurance, leadership appreciation and mental ability tests, carried out over three days under very discouraging conditions. In the end, he was one of only three persons selected from the 48 candidates in his batch, to be trained overseas as commissioned officers. The other two were Dunstan Thompson, a nephew of Dudley Thompson and Stacy Thompson (not related), a past student of Wolmer's Boys. "I felt very fortunate to have succeeded and I grabbed the opportunity with both hands," Burrell recounts.
He was sent to do basic officer training with the Canadian Armed Forces at Chilliwac in the vast hills of British Columbia. Later he went to New Brunswick for combat training. He remembers a particular assignment when his squad of 10 was dropped off by helicopter in the middle of a snow-covered forest and told to find a point more than 100 miles from base. They were given compasses, a backpack with small tins of high-protein ration, enough to last for five days, and told to survive anyhow they could. Says Burrell: "After the first two days in that cold, dark forest, I felt as if I was never going to live to return to sunny Jamaica." They made it in four days. But they were a sorry sight to see with their blistered hands, swollen feet, cracked lips, and completely fatigued. Shortly after their arrival, a helicopter came with live chickens, one for each trainee. They were given fuel tablets and told to kill and cook the chickens in their mess tins. It was half-cooked when Burrell began to devour his. "But it was the nicest piece of meat I had ever had," he says, recalling the unbelievable hunger pangs that shook their exhausted bodies as they fought their way through the thick growth of the forest interred in snow. "That is how I know human beings don't die so easily," Burrell chuckles in retrospect. He'd also learn to appreciate more the Jamaican sun every morning he wakes up. Back at base, at Gage Town, "we were so fit and charged up that we closed down every discotheque in the town that weekend".

Operation Urgent Fury

In Jamaica once more, army life would seem like a cakewalk now. Speaking of which, while he was still in the army, Burrell and his wife had started a business, baking and selling cakes and other pastry from home. They called the business 'Cake World'. This happened while he was stationed at the Newcastle base and in charge of training, at the rank of second lieutenant. There, Burrell tried out everything he had learnt in Canada. His favourite punishment was to have errant recruits roll the entire length of the parade square on the hot asphalt. He also liked to put them in a tear gas chamber and order them to take off their mask briefly and say their names. After a few times, every man became circumspect. His challenge was to transform recruits from civilians into soldiers in a matter of 10 to 12 weeks. Failure was not an option.
Burrell saw service in Grenada when the US launched "Operation Urgent Fury" in 1983, at the height of a coup d'etat against Prime Minister Maurice Bishop by hardline Maxist-Leninist members of his New Jewel Movement. The charismatic Bishop and some of his Cabinet ministers were assassinated and, with the neighbouring eastern Caribbean states in a flat panic, Dominican prime minister, Dame Eugenia Charles, telephoned US president, Ronald Reagan, asking for urgent help. The Jamaican troops, about 100 or so at a time, went there to do mopping up operations, under the supervision of Colonel Ken Barnes, father of John Barnes, the first Jamaican to play for the English national football team. Burrell admires Colonel Barnes as "a great military leader". The Jamaicans did not see actual combat, but two were injured when an explosive went off by accident, he recalls. At the end, Burrell received the General Service Medal for service in Grenada.

'Boys' Town drill soldiers'

It transpired that Colonel Barnes was the man in charge of sports at the JDF when Burrell saw a humiliating headline in a newspaper, blaring out: "Boys' Town drill soldiers". Burrell was embarrassed. and livid. He went to Barnes and showed him the story, telling him that this was too shameful to be tolerated. Barnes put him in charge of football, and Burrell got to work immediately. He recruited a coach, a civilian named Raymond Beek, and together they wrote a plan emphasising serious training. There were some who felt the whole thing was foolishness because winning the premier league trophy was way out of the reach of the soldiers. Burrell didn't bother to listen. Within three years, the JDF football club were premier league champions and three of his players - Michael Tulloch, Eric Curry and Wayne Wonder - had made the Jamaican national team. The feat has not yet been repeated. But more importantly, Burrell had taken the first steps on a journey that, even he could not have known at the time, would blaze a historic trail of glory for his small island country.
Next week: World Cup glory and a coup in the palace
Send comments on this interview to desal@cwjamaica.com

Your View of the Interview

John Maxwell

. Read your feature on John Maxwell. As expected, it is well written. Easy and interesting reading. Congrats and keep up the good work.
Clare Forrester
forrestc@cpc.paho.org

. Your features so far have been extremely informative. I am enjoying them while learning some history. Anyway, thought I'd share this with you. Ambassador Dudley Thompson now lives in South Florida. The more I see him, the more this thought comes to mind. Since you are now doing these series of interviews why not include him as a prospect? Although he seems to be slowing down physically, his mind is still keenly alert, and no doubt, he has a lot of history to tell. As I am reading your articles, I am thinking that this is an area you might want to look into, and indeed a story I would wish to read. You would do a great job with it.
Cheryl Wynter
jismiami@bellsouth.net

Mothers can't father

Trousers in Denim

Cream of the 'Crop'