WESTERN BUREAU — Ashford “Lord Pakeye” Rothfynn may be dead and buried, but it will be a long, long time before he will be forgotten by people in Falmouth, Trelawny.

Lord Pakeye was neither rich nor famous, but he was a unique personality in the town, the man everybody knew by sight. The Observer was unable to obtain a photograph of “Pakeye” from his friends and family. Such things were not important to him.

“What I know about him is that he loved to read. Most times you would see him with an Observer in his back pocket. He was very knowledgeable about current affairs and he was a race horse lover,” said one man who has known “Pakeye” for the past six years, but who wanted to remain anonymous.

“He sported a bald head and was a comical person. He made people laugh. He would sit for hours just talking about movies with myself and other people. And if you heard him talk about movies, you would sit for hours and listen too. He’ll be sadly missed, especially with all the stories he used to tell,” the man added smiling.

On Saturday, January 12, three days after he was last seen alive, Lord Pakeye was found dead inside his partially burnt-out house on Princess Street in Falmouth.

Many did not get the opportunity to pay their final respects to the 61 year-old man when he was buried the following Tuesday. And even a week later he was still “the talk of the town” as people exchanged stories about him in an effort to come to terms with his sudden passing.

Lord Pakeye, the eldest of his mother’s nine children, was a permanent fixture on Falmouth’s streets where he could be seen daily, either in dialogue with someone or sitting placidly by himself. And, as each day drew to a close, he would go home, alone, where he would prepare his evening meal in a cheese tin perched on a wood fire.

His oldest sister, Mavis Rowe, who teaches at the Salvation Army Basic School in Falmouth, is still grief-stricken at his passing. She was one of the last persons to see him alive last Wednesday.

“I saw him on Wednesday (sleeping along Market Street) but then, normally when I see him, that is where he always is. More time I see him sit there, I would go over and say something to him but when I saw him Wednesday I just say ‘look at him sleeping’, not knowing that he was in trouble… And I am really troubled about that,” she said, tears in her eyes.

She remembers him as the brother of her youth.

But Pakeye’s life took a bad turn after he was severely burnt during a fire inside the chemistry lab at the Long Pond Sugar Factory in the late 1960s. He was working in the distillery at the time of the accident.

“That was where he got burnt and it became a disability to his life. He was badly burnt all over — his face, body and just about everywhere — and because of what happened to him it seems he suffered a mental breakdown and just didn’t get the urge to go and look another job,” Rowe told the Observer.

She said, however, that she was comforted by the fact that he had remained fiercely independent throughout the years and that he would be remembered and loved.

But Rowe said she would always regret the fact that people had not been given an opportunity to pay their final respects to her brother.

“In the community, he is well loved, because even after the burial Tuesday, a group of guys came and asked me why I buried him that early… people wanted to pay their last respects. But because of the state (his body) was in, he had to be buried (quickly),” she said.

Said one female resident: “I think it is people like “Pakeye” that give towns their character and I think he will be greatly missed for sure. He may not have had children or held any big positions, but he was one of the people who gave the town character and in that regard the town has suffered a loss.”