SIR John Golding is a tropical orthopaedic doctor, who dedicated his life to helping physically challenged individuals to lead normal lives through medical care and education. He believed that “The greatest of all mistakes is to do nothing because all we can do so little.”

Born in London in 1921, he completed his studies and moved to Jamaica in 1953 where he worked as a lecturer in medical ethics. He later established and opened the School of Physical Therapy. Some time later the country was struck by a severe poliomyelitis outbreak, and deciding that he needed to do more than ‘fix limbs’, he organised a polio rehabilitation centre.

This centre later became known as the Mona Rehabilitation Centre, where disabled patients could get medical assistance for the physical and emotional strains of polio. Here too, Golding started schools for the handicapped, a company and a fairground to employ the disabled, a prosthetics and orthotics centre, a physiotherapy school, a wheelchair sports programme and a hospice where he would offer free help to those in need.

While balancing his many local projects, he took time out to visit neighbouring countries Haiti and Belize to offer free medical care wherever needed.

For his work in polio rehabilitation and tropical orthopaedics, he was given the Order of the British Empire in 1959. In 1966, he started the Polio Games as a means of physical exercise for his patients; this concept was later transformed into the Special Olympics.

Along with his previously stated recognition, he also received the Order of Jamaica in 1974, LLD Honoris Causa, from the University of Toronto in 1984 and was knighted by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II in 1986.

As expected, these steps have paved the way for special education in Jamaica and to date, the John Golding Mona Rehabilitation Centre (renamed in 1996 when he died) is still the only centre of its type in the English-speaking Caribbean.