It is easy to imagine that if Professor Dr Floyd Morris were an athlete, the number of gold medals he would have garnered for Jamaica would rival the astounding feats of his peerless compatriot and earth’s fastest man, Mr Usain Bolt.

Fresh from his May 30, 2024 appointment as the first blind professor in almost a century by The University of the West Indies (UWI), Senator Morris has just had his four-year tenure renewed on the United Nations Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD).

Impressively, he got the nod from 135 out of 186 countries who are members of CRPD, the international body of experts that monitors the implementation of the rights guaranteed under the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.

Nineteen years ago, an interviewer in this newspaper wrote of then Mr Morris: “In a world of constant darkness, where hope is a rare commodity and cynicism always just inches below the surface, how deep must one reach into life’s entrails to extract the courage to become a leader among sighted men?

“Or, what manner of man is this Floyd Morris that he can so overwhelmingly overcome the horrible sentence of blindness and turn his life into the ultimate inspiration to a generation of people made disabled by unkind accidents of fate?

“Blind at 17 on the brink of emerging manhood, Morris overcame dreadful anger, depression, postponed ambitions, the ignorance of people who didn’t know how to deal with blindness and the threat of yielding to the doubting voice that whispered ‘it’s over for you, give up!’”

The story of Professor Floyd Emerson Morris, an author, lecturer and director of The UWI’s Centre for Disability Studies, is one that should be held up to all Jamaican children, especially the disabled, as an example of what they could become.

Indeed, every young Jamaican should read Dr Morris’ 2017 autobiography,
By Faith, Not By Sight – The Autobiography of Jamaica’s First Blind Senator, a powerful account of dark struggles and unbelievable triumphs, touching on the low moments as well as the dizzying heights that defied his disability.

Dr Morris graduated from St Mary High School, St Mary, without any academic subject in 1986 and became totally blind due to glaucoma three years later, recounting: “I was left staring in the barrel of a gun called poverty because being blind and having no academic qualifications is a recipe for perpetual poverty.”

His resolve “not to allow this precarious situation to hold me back”, is what is lacking in many of our young people who see no alternative to a life of emptiness and recruitment by heartless thugs into crime.

Among his historical achievements, Dr Morris was appointed the first blind senator in 1998; president of the Senate in 2013 and minister of state in the Ministry of Labour and Social Security in that year. He was conferred with his PhD in 2017; appointed director of disability studies and represents Jamaica at the United Nations as a global spokesman for the disabled.

It has not been easy for the professor by any stretch of the imagination. He has had to master the use of technology for the blind to be able to read and write, distinguishing himself in the areas of research, teaching and public service.

We congratulate Professor Dr Floyd Morris on an awesome job and an awe-inspiring life.