Have you been noticing an uncanny resemblance lately between Prime Minister Andrew Holness and the late Prime Minister Sir Donald Sangster? Both in speech and in facial features and in mannerisms? Indeed, Holness’s presentations, although not intentional, ring a familiar bell in my mind when I see him speaking on the television. And, come to think of it, Sangster and himself are the only two prime ministers to wear eyeglasses on a permanent basis.

Now, who am I to remember what Donald Sangster looked like? Most of my recollections of his image would have been garnered from black and white photographs in the newspapers and black and white television in later years. Sangster’s time preceded colour television, which only came to Jamaica in 1975.

I never, as a youth in another part of rural Jamaica, ever met the man, but on several brief occasions I got close enough to have his image stamped firmly into my memory. Let’s see, there was the afternoon when he was the guest speaker at my school’s prize-giving (today’s graduation) ceremony in St Elizabeth. I even remember the basic tenets of his speech, which I am sure you will think is unusual, because who amongst us paid the slightest attention to or can remember what the guest speaker said at our graduation long gone.

Sangster was then the deputy prime minister and finance minister in the new, Independence Government of the early 1960s. For some reason it remains with me that his speech congratulated Munro College on the transformation of a school that, in his time, catered to sons of the gentry and well-to-do, to the beginning of an era, in my time, when elementary and Common Entrance students were lining up to be accepted and easily assimilated into those hallowed century-old halls.

Not long after, I saw him again, this time while I was on a holiday job at the Jamaica Information Service carrying camera bags for the news teams while he presided over a Commonwealth Finance Minister’s Conference session at The University Of the West Indies Extra-Mural Department.

A couple of years later, it was at the opening of the St Elizabeth Parish Library’s new building in Black River. As young librarians we watched in amusement as the deputy prime minister did a brisk foxtrot across the dance floor with our boss, Director Joyce Robinson. The moves were later categorised into what we called a ‘Sangster’ and had staff across the island shaking a leg in that direction for years as we mimicked a favourite couple.

It must have been the journalist in me that kept me shadowing Sir Donald over the years. His biography is entitled The Forgotten Prime Minister, and it is true that, to a large extent, we have failed to honour in his entirety this man who served Jamaica so long and so well. In fact, as pointed out by Olive Senior in her introduction to the book, “The failure to even mark his birthday each year is symptomatic of an attitude over the years to ignore the existence of Donald Sangster so that he remains a vague name to younger generations.”

Ironically, he only served seven weeks as prime minister, the last three weeks of which were spent in a coma in a Montreal Hospital before his untimely death on April 11, 1967. Yet, we should never ignore the fact that this outstanding Jamaican, who first entered public life in 1933, was at the forefront of Jamaican national leadership from 1949 when he was named minister of social welfare and first deputy leader of the Jamaica Labour Party until his passing.

For 17 years he served as 1st deputy leader of the party, then three years as acting prime minister before being prime minister. And it is generally agreed that he was the pivot around which much of Jamaica’s growth in stature, from colony to nation, turned in the years immediately before and after Independence.

Local government candidates who are vying for parish council seats tomorrow may want to remember and recognise this fact. Donald Sangster is the youngest-ever member elected to a parish council (then called a parochial board). He was elected to the St Elizabeth Parochial Board in 1933 at the age of 21, and became chairman in 1949.

When you compare the rhetoric that plays out now as exchanges between politicians, or in election debates, Sangster stands head and shoulders above the rest because he was different, and remarkably so. “By nature he was not flamboyant,” says Senior. “He worked without any political fanfare.” It was he who presided over the Independence preparations and ceremonies, the first gigantic celebrations in the National Stadium on August 5, 1962, the official opening of the first Independence Parliament by royalty, the choosing of our flag and anthem, and the wave of economic growth of the 1960s that started with his first Independence Budget in 1962.

Sangster was a man whose career and public service was worth shadowing. His story is as colourful as the adventures of a young Alexander Clarke (later Bustamante), or the war hero years of Norman Manley. He was Christian in his beliefs and outlook and enjoyed life to the max. I spent time a few years ago with members of the respected Sangster family at Fullerswood in St Elizabeth, one of the Sangster properties, while researching aspects of his early life for the author of his biography. The family welcomed and entertained and, as a would-be historian, I was thrilled to listen to recollections of those early years of his youthful days.

No wonder he could dance so well. Sangster the parish cricket captain, was a natural athlete who represented Munro at Champs, a race horse owner who enjoyed race days at Black River and Gilnock, and a partygoer who never missed a dance on weekends. He would carry the leading musicians of the time, T Miller and the Lititz Mento Band, to several spots each Saturday night. And with an eye for the ladies, he was well known as a handsome batchelor who would tread the light fantastic.

I have a poignant memory of Donald Sangster on an occasion which came up during my shadow boxing with him in those early, brief encounters. This one happened in May Pen one morning when, a few days after the 1967 election won by Sangster, the Jamaica Labour Party took off on their traditional islandwide ‘thank-you’ motorcade. Sangster headed the victory parade of candidates, winners and losers who had stood for election the previous week.

Of course, this opportunity couldn’t pass me. The May Pen stop was on the piazza of Storks deRoux and Son’s hardware. I watched as Sangster emerged from a round of hand-shaking in the crowd and stepped unto the makeshift platform to join a young Edward Seaga who appeared to be marshalling the programme. For that brief moment I remember thinking to myself that he looked tired. This was not the cool, debonair personality portrayed in the newspapers or pictured on the television. The midday sun was hot. He wiped his brow, and I heard him ask, “Should we start the speeches now?” Seaga replied, “Yes, we have to move on, we are running behind time.”

My impression was that there was camaraderie between the two. This was borne out later in Seaga’s autobiography where he describes several exchanges and deliberations that took place between them over policy and other matters.

That would be the last of the fly-on-the-wall glimpses that I had of this man. Seven weeks later he was dead, with the nation going into prolonged mourning over the passing of a great Jamaican giant.

I nearly forgot. I had a final look when I viewed his body in the casket at a lying-in-state at the Chapleton Anglican Church. His body was taken by train across sections of the island for similar stops before the Kingston Parish Church two-day viewing, where some 100,000 people filed passed.

Back to Fullerswood when I visited the family home to do my research: “It was right here on this verandah that I saw him for the last time,” said a cousin. “It was during the motorcade, and Donald stopped here for a few minutes. He was not looking himself,” she told me, “and we tried to persuade him to return to Kingston and take a well-earned rest.” That was not to be.

Unknown except by a few close friends and associates, he was a long-standing hypertension patient, and until then it was largely undertreated. The motorcade continued. A few days later he retired to the military bungaloo ‘Bush Cottage’ at Newcastle to work on the 1967/68 budget. A helper found him collapsed on the bathroom floor early Saturday morning. He was rushed down the hill to his official residence at Vale Royal. People who saw the prime minister’s cadillac speeding by were unaware that their fallen prime minister was in the car. He died in Canada on April 11, 1967. The headlines said it all. ‘Jamaica weeps for Sir Donald’. Another giant tree had fallen in the forest.

Lance Neita is a public and community relations consultant and writer. Send comments to the Observer orlanceneita@hotmail.com.