IN many countries, those who have become super rich often feel the need to give back to the society which spawned them and from which they made their enormous wealth. In this regard Jamaica is no exception.

It is also common to find that the super rich combine giving back with a contribution which immortalises them. However, in Jamaica there is not much of a tradition or culture of remembrance by memorial.

These memorials take the form of endowing a professorship or chair in an academic discipline at a university. In some cases they provide the funds to construct a building which, in perpetuity, bears the name or names (sometimes a husband and wife) of the generous donor.

Jamaica’s world famous Franklin W Knight is Leonard and Helen R Stulman Professor of History at Johns Hopkins University.

On a larger scale, an individual may give enough to have an entire “school” named after them e.g. the business school. In 1996 Wafic Saïd donated £23 million to establish the Saïd School of Business, at Oxford University and committed another £15 million for the construction of a new building to house the Saïd Business School Centre for Executive Education. Saïd also provided substantial funding for the establishment of the Wafic Saïd Molecular Cardiology & Gene Therapy Research Laboratory at St Luke’s Episcopal Hospital, in Houston, Texas.

The Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania was established in 1958 by alumnus Walter Annenberg, publisher and philanthropist.

Not only the rich have sought to memorialise themselves in this most noble fashion. Not infrequently, the classrooms or lecture theatres of foreign universities are named after the class of a specific year because the graduates of that year have pooled together to maintain that room, or have given collectively enough for their alma mater to recognise their generosity with a plaque and room. Sometimes a grateful patient will adopt a ward or a clinic at a university or hospital.

There is the Aaron and Marjorie Matalon donation of a collection of Jamaican paintings to the National Gallery. The Karl Hendrickson Auditorium at Jamaica College named after the donor, as well as a laboratory at Campion College.

The Tony Thwaites Wing at the University Hospital of the West Indies and the Hyacinth Chen School of Nursing and building at the Northern Caribbean University endowed by Michael Lee-Chin and named for his mother. Ironically, his own memorial to date is in Toronto, Canada, where he made his fortune.

There are other examples, like the library at Campion College which was endowed by the Hon Gordon ‘Butch’ Stewart and named for his late son and Campion past student, Johnathan Stewart. But they are exceptions and together they do not represent a tradition or a culture of memorial by endowment.

We need to develop in Jamaica a culture in which a memorial by endowment is viewed as a worthwhile endeavour by the rich and the super rich. We suggest that this type of memorial be extended to local and foreign companies as a way of promotion and contribution, especially to our financially strapped universities. We could suggest a George Beckford Professorship in Economics at UWI or, where funding is needed, the Michael Manley Professorship in Public Policy.

An old African saying is that a person is not really dead if someone calls his name. There is no better way to be remembered than by a professorship, lecture hall, hospital ward or school.