SANTA CRUZ, St Elizabeth — If 20 years ago you had asked Morris Holness which profession he thought his son Andrew would choose, he probably would have said law.

“One can never tell for sure about these things for God has a plan for all of us, but he was such a talker and with such a sharp mind that I would have predicted law,” Holness told the Sunday Observer on Friday.

Now that his 39-year-old son is Jamaica’s ninth prime minister, Morris Holness said he may not have correctly read all the signs but he always knew Andrew Michael Holness was headed for great things.

Flanked by a few of his numerous dogs on the verandah of his home in Goshen, four miles east of Santa Cruz, Holness, a 65-year-old farmer with a Bachelor’s degree in Management, told several anecdotes, which he claimed captured the “trends” and signalled the path his boy would take.

To begin with, said the senior Holness, Andrew, his first child, was always his own man, highly protective of his identity.

“I remember once when I went to look for him in St Catherine where he lived with his mother… he was about two years of age,” said a reflective Holness.

“I drove into the yard, he came on to the verandah and was looking at me. I said ‘who are you?’ and I was expecting him to say something like ‘I am your son’, but instead he said “mi self is mi self’, I never forgot what he said to me that day.

“It kinda cut me down to size at the time, but until now that’s him. He has his own identity, so he is not anybody else but Andrew, he will pick the best from anybody else but ‘mi self is mi self, that’s him’,” said a chuckling Holness.

He claimed his son — who spent most holidays with him — was always a “positive person” with a calm spirit. He told of an occasion in the late 1970s, when the child was six or seven years old, to underline Andrew’s “positivity”.

It was a time of great political turbulence as the Cold War division in the wider world manifested itself in Jamaica through the struggle between the left-leaning ruling People’s National Party (PNP) and the then Opposition Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) to the right.

Such was the level of tension that businesses, including gas stations, were closing their doors by dusk right across the country.

Morris Holness, who was taking his son to spend time with him in Goshen, had made the mistake of not “topping up” enough on gasoline. He found the gas stations closed as he headed back home.

As he climbed Melrose Hill in Manchester, Holness started to worry as the gas gauge dipped towards E (empty). “I said ‘Andrew bwoy, it look like we might not even make it home’, and he said ‘Daddy, we’ll make it, don’t worry about it, we’ll make it…'”

“That, for me, told the story of the positivity of the young man… we’ll make it,” said Holness.

As the boy grew, the elder Holness found him to be exceptionally careful and thoughtful about the consequences of his actions. Morris Holness recalled how he had assigned his son the job of spraying pumpkins on the farm.

“I had to leave him, so I told him: ‘when you are finished, hide the spray pump’, … when I looked I saw him coming with the spray pump on his back. I said ‘why you didn’t do as I said?’ and he said ‘I am not leaving the spray pump Daddy, the pump is safer here, I will carry the pump’, so you could pick up the traits very early — careful, positive and always with his own identity,” said Holness.

Just as important, he said, his son was a “seeker after knowledge” always yearning for education and an achiever.

“As he comes to the house… he grabs a book, he is a seeker of knowledge, if you want to hide anything from him don’t put in a book, he will find it,” he said.

Holness told another anecdote of how his son had met a slight bump, having been unsuccessful in an ‘A’ level subject.

“He was sick and he came down to look for me, he was a slim guy and when he came down he was ‘mawga’, worrying,” said Holness with a chuckle.

“I said, ‘man, give the books a rest, relax’!! … many years later after he finished university and was working he told me he had something against me because I had told him to leave off the books. I said ‘no man, that wasn’t the case (but) you can’t kill yourself in the process of seeking an education, take a rest and come again,” said Holness.

“But that tells you that he was always focused on getting an education, which is manifesting itself right now,” he added.

The senior Holness claimed his son’s calm spirit and ability to absorb criticism without rancour make him ideal for politics.

“He has never exchanged a hard word with me, very thick-skinned… criticisms will just roll off him like water on a well-polished car, very thick-skinned,” he said.

However, “I have pointed out to him that where he is heading thick skin alone won’t do it; he will need to put on the Armour of God, but I am not worried (because) I said it to him… I said I don’t know, even remember, where in the Bible that is: and he said ‘Daddy, it is in Ephesians’, so he knew it… so I am sure he has it (God’s armour) on now.

“I tell him to pray, whatever occasion you going out on, pray before, sometime I see him in a difficult position and I call him, he is trying to explain to me why he is taking this action and I said ‘I don’t agree with you, but I am sure you have prayed’ and he said ‘yes Daddy, I have prayed’. He knows he is not going by himself; he believes in the guidance of God almighty…”