TWO of the Caribbean’s most eminent citizens, the novelist George Lamming and the diplomat Shridath Ramphal, have been recalling the outstanding contributions to this region by Professor Rex Nettleford who passed away in a United States hospital on Tuesday night following a massive heart attack. He was 77.

Sir Shridath — who had known Professor Nettleford for many years before they worked closely together while the former Commonwealth secretary general served as chancellor of the University of the West Indies for some 15 years — said: “All humanity, and within it Jamaica, the Caribbean, the non-white world, the world of dance and culture, academe in our region and beyond have all lost in Rex Nettleford, a rare ‘incandescent eagle’. For many who had the good fortune to know him even a little, for few knew him entirely, a light has gone out of our lives.”

“I seemed to have known Rex Nettleford all my adult life. Like Phillip Sherlock, he embodied and epitomised the UWI; what was best about it; what was noble in its mission; what it symbolised for all West Indians,” he added.

In his tribute to Nettleford, Lamming noted that “it is customary to emphasise our loss when a celebrated person dies, but the death of Rex Nettleford should alert us to reflect on the range and depth of his legacy.”

As assessed by Lamming, Nettleford carried “a cultural profile that would have done credit to the careers of any four or five reputable university graduates.”

“His grass roots commitment as a director of the Extra Mural Department of the UWI made him a household name for many a family throughout the anglophone Caribbean,” he said.

Lamming recalled seeing him in the triple roles of director, choreographer and lead dancer in the Jamaica National Dance Company, and wondered how he combined such excellence of performance with the duties of administration, teaching, writing, and the public intellectual whose service as a lecturer were sought in the most prestigious centres of learning in Europe and the Americas.”

Nettleford, noted Lamming, “was a Jamaican who understood what it meant to be Caribbean and who saw the Caribbean as the most privileged window from which to engage the complexities of the modern world. Jamaica and the region can take some pride in producing this quality of citizen”.

— Rickey Singh