This year marks the 60th anniversary of the founding of Boys’ Town. It was in September 1940 that the Government of Jamaica and the YMCA collaborated on the need for a social intervention that would serve the needs of underprivileged youth in West Kingston and Trench Town.

The Methodist Church responded positively to the request for the secondment of 35-year-old minister, Hugh Sherlock, to spearhead this intervention. It was in these circumstances that the Kingston Boys’ Club was started in the hall of the Jones Town Baptist Church, which two years later moved to its own home in Trench Town and changed its name to Boys’ Town.

Trench Town in 1940 reflected the ordeal of slum life which was the experience of the urban poor. A survey done in 1935 showed that as many as 1,000 dwellers living in simple one room huts constructed from cardboard and wooden barrels, shared a single stand pipe.

To the extent that a social process can be the work of an individual, Hugh Sherlock, for 16 years as founding director, made Boys’ Town an oasis of training, hope and opportunity for boys in the western end of the capital city. The motto of Boys’ Town was “We Build”, and the institution’s crest, which showed a boy reading a book at one end, two boys playing cricket at the other, and a cross in the centre appropriately depicted the mental, physical and spiritual objectives of the institution. Without Boys’ Town, thousands of young boys may well have been led to a life of crime and anti-social behaviour.

The finest product of Boys’ Town was O’Neil Gordon “Collie” Smith (1933-1959). Born in Denham Town to working-class parents, “Collie” Smith was just 13 years old when he enrolled at Boys’ Town, and the mentorship of Father Sherlock was the decisive factor in his phenomenal development. Within a decade, he would become the pride and joy of Boys’ Town, a cricket legend of Kingston College and Jamaica’s leading all-round cricketer. He took his successes in stride and his commitment to Christian values never wavered. His infectious personality and leadership qualities endeared him to his colleagues. It was his tragic passing in 1959 that kept him from the position for which he seemed destined – captaincy of the West Indies Cricket Team.

However, Boys’ Town was not Father Sherlock’s only success. He was the third son of Methodist minister, Reverend Terrence Sherlock and his wife, Adina, and the outstanding Jamaican patriot, Phillip Sherlock, was his elder brother. Hugh grew up in a home that inculcated Christian values and a commitment to nation-building.

After graduating from Calabar in 1922, Hugh Sherlock first worked in the civil service before following in his father’s footsteps. He was ordained as a Methodist minister and served in the Turks Islands before returning to Jamaica to succeed his father in the Ocho Rios circuit of Methodist Churches from 1937 to 1940. It was at this stage of his career that his exemplary life of public service unfolded. Over the next five decades he would serve the Jamaican people as founder/director of Boys’ Town; national chairman of the Jamaican Methodist District; chairman of the Boards of Management of St Andrew High School for Girls, Excelsior College, York Castle and Morant Bay high schools.

Father Sherlock was also the first president of the autonomous Methodist Conference of the Caribbean and the Americas, and a member of the Executive Committee of the World Methodist Council. He still found time to captain the County of Cornwall Cricket team, as well as the Boys’ Town cricket and football teams.

His exemplary service to community, country and region did not go unnoticed. He was awarded the Turks Island Medal in 1949 and a United Nations Fellowship in 1954. He was made an Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire in 1955; received an Honorary Doctorate in Divinity from the Baldwin-Wallace College in Ohio, USA in 1972; and an Honorary LLD from The University of the West Indies in 1977. That same year he was the recipient of the Order of Jamaica, and in 1983 received the Norman Manley Award for Excellence in the field of religion.

Dr the Reverend Hugh Braham Sherlock, OJ, OBE, DD, is an automatic inclusion in the list of great Jamaicans of the 20th century, and his life and work will always be a source of inspiration and worth of emulation.

K Churchill Neita is a veteran attorney-at-law