This year, on Sunday October 9, in recognition of the 160th anniversary of Munro College, 16 persons will be inducted into the Munro College Old Boys Association (MCOBA) Hall of Fame.

This number represents one inductee for each decade of Munro’s existence, and will also match the 16 persons already inducted over the four previous editions of the induction ceremony.

Those eligible for the awards are old boys who have made significant contributions to the school or to society at the national or international level, and members of the school’s administration who have made significant contributions to the institution.

The inductees to date are:

2012

Lloyd Lindberg

“Lindy” Delapenha

Sports legend Lindy Delapenha at Munro for his 2012 Hall of Fame induction, flanked by his beauty-queen daughter Marie-Clare Delapenha-Lyons (left), and beauty-queen granddaughter, Brittany Lyons (right).

Sporting legend Lloyd Lindberg “Lindy” Delapenha earned school colours at Munro in football, cricket, hockey, tennis, boxing, athletics, and gymnastics.

On two separate occasions he was precocious enough to score centuries, 129 and 126, against a visiting adult team that happened to be a George Headley X1. When Munro won Boys Championships in 1945, the points from Lindy alone would have placed the school third. Incredulous doctors at the meet scrutinized the young phenomenon closely, and because of him, a new rule was instituted, limiting competitors to no more than four events.

By way of the British army, Lindy made his way into English club football, where he became the first Jamaican, and one of the first black overseas players, in the English League.

On returning to Jamaica in 1964, Lindy became a household name after joining the Jamaica Broadcasting Cooperation in 1966 to work with the famous Roy Lawrence, a fellow Munro Old Boy, as a sports commentator. When Lawrence departed in 1968, Lindy was appointed Director of Sports, and his 30 year stint in TV ended in 1997.

Delapenha was inducted for his status as a schoolboy athlete legend, a football legend as an adult, and as a celebrated sports broadcaster.

John Oliver (Jackie) Minott, CD.

John Oliver “Jackie” Minott, former Chairman of the Munro and Dickenson Trust and Chairman of Jamaica Standard Products Company, in addition to the production of tiles and pimento leaf oil, is best known for the production and export of the High Mountain Coffee Brand and as founder of the annual High Mountain Coffee 10K Road Race in Manchester.

Minott was inducted for his achievements as a leading and honourable businessman as well as his several years of sterling service to Munro as an administrator.

Richard B. Roper, OD.

In 1955, Richard Brooks Duet Roper, at a mere twenty-eight years old, took the reins of one of the oldest and most prestigious schools in Jamaica. He was to become known as its greatest ever headmaster to date.

Munro College was all of 99 years old when he took over, and it was already a great school before he had anything to do with it. Since then, however, and up to now, the stellar reputation that Munro College enjoys as the last bastion of educated gentlemen, is due in no small part to the leadership of Richard Roper. He protected the schools best traditions and created his own, and he protected his office. He once told a boy “you can mess with Richard Roper, but you can’t mess with the Head Master of Munro College!”

Mentor and maestro, icon and institution, leader and living legend, Richard Roper was inducted in honour of his status as a Munro icon and legend and a headmaster par excellence.

Stephen Frederick

“Staggy” Harle

The late Stephen Frederick Harle was Richard Roper’s right hand and secret weapon, and as important as that role was, he became a Munro legend in his own right as a brilliant administrator and chemistry teacher, a beacon of ethics and integrity, and a larger-than-life campus personality for the ages.

Stephen Harle became known for many things, but was perhaps best known for teaching chemistry at both Munro College, and its sister school, Hampton, for nearly 50 years, during which he enjoyed an 80 per cent average pass rate for both CXC/CAPE O’ level and GCE/CAPE A’ level chemistry across both schools. In 1989, because they had no chemistry teacher that year, he also taught A’ level students from Manchester High School as well. He famously taught chemistry without a textbook, and barring abject inability, students were almost guaranteed a pass – at least – just by being in his class.

On the job, he was a studious workaholic who never shirked responsibility, but off the job, he was just as dedicated to having fun. In total contrast to the stern demeanour he maintained in front of the students, Stephen Harle was the life of any party with his adult friends, and his weekend and nocturnal escapades and adventures were legendary. He was the architect, host, and headline attraction at the infamous “Dive” below the staff room, as well as a frequent guest star at neighbourhood bars.

Steven Harle was posthumously inducted in honour of his status as a Munro icon and legend and as a chemistry teacher and administrator par excellence.

2013

THE MOST HON. SIR DONALD BURNS SANGSTER, ON, KCVO

The late Donald Sangster entered Munro College at ten and boarded in Calder House. He passed eight subjects, including a distinction in Chemistry in 1925 in the Junior Local Cambridge examinations. In 1927 he came second in Jamaica in the Senior Cambridge examinations – the same year that his father died.

After school, he felt the tug to go into politics, and campaigned with his legislator uncle Peter Watt Sangster in the 1930’s. His political career began in 1933, when he won a seat on the St. Elizabeth Parochial Board (now renamed the Parish Council) at the age of 21. He believed one should be properly equipped to help people, and so he opted to also study law, and became articled to Solicitor Mervin T. King in Black River. Donald took to law like a duck to water, and in 1937 at 26 years old, he came first in Jamaica in the final Solicitors’ examinations.

His ambitions to help people did not always fit neatly into a JLP or PNP category, and after universal adult suffrage and a new constitution came in 1944 and general elections were held, Sangster ran and lost as an independent candidate.

Next elections in 1949, Donald ran for the victorious JLP and won his seat. Party leader Alexander Bustamante gave him the Social Welfare portfolio and one year later, Sangster was elected the first deputy leader of the party, and served in that office for 17 years. In February 1953, Donald Sangster became Minister of Finance and leader of the House. From that time on, Donald Sangster became the solid base of the Jamaica Labour Party- the maestro who captured the sometimes overheated statements of Bustamante and marshalled them into legal policy. His consensual approach from a position of knowledge and experience gave stability to the JLP Government. He also became formidable in the outside world of politics – in Washington, in London, and in the Commonwealth, and earned from his colleagues the title of “Mr. Commonwealth.”

On March 11, 1963, just before the end of the first year in office as government, the 79 year old Bustamante appointed Donald Sangster as deputy prime minister. Bustamante’s health deteriorated and he had to relinquish his duties, and in January 1965, he asked the Governor General to appoint Donald Sangster as acting Prime Minister, acting minister of external affairs, and acting minister of defence. In the next general elections held on February 21, 1967, Sangster led the JLP to victory with 33 seats to the PNP’s 20, on February 22, 1967, was sworn in as Prime Minister of Jamaica.

Less than a month after becoming Prime Minister, on March 18, 1967, Donald Sangster suffered a cerebral seizure while on retreat at Newcastle preparing for the budget. On April 7 he was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II while in a coma. On April 11 he died in hospital in Montreal and on April 17, 1967, he was interred at National Heroes Park after a State Funeral.

The Most Hon. Sir Donald Burns Sangster was posthumously inducted for his stellar leadership and contribution to Jamaican politics.

ANTONY “TONY” KEITH

EDMUND HART, CD, JP.

Tony Hart was sent to Munro College in 1941 and left in 1949. Quite the all-round athlete, he represented the school in tennis, shooting, football, and gymnastics.

It is the expansive and ambitious vision of Tony Hart which is credited for developing the Montego Bay we know today. In 1967, he undertook the massive project of building what is now the sprawling Freeport in Montego Bay, involving dredging the sea in some areas, creating 350 new acres of land where swamp existed before, and installing four berths for ships in what became the largest port in the parish. This project produced 92 acres more than the 258 acres reclaimed in Kingston for Newport West in the same era.

In recent years, he has become as well known for his philanthropy as for his business prowess.

In August 2004, Tony Hart, aka Mr. Montego Bay, was honoured by the government of Jamaica for his outstanding contribution to the development of western Jamaica, and was conferred with the Order of Distinction, Commander Class. In 2013, he became the first person from the west of the island to be inducted into the Private Sector Organisation of Jamaica (PSOJ) Hall of Fame.

Antony “Tony” Hart was inducted for his status as a business icon and leading philanthropist.

Lawrence Wilmot

“Laurie” Sharp JP

In 1946 at age eleven, the late Lawrence Wilmot “Laurie” Sharp was sent to Munro College in St. Elizabeth, and there he thrived.

After Munro and tertiary studies, businessman Laurie Sharp first made his name as Managing Director of Tropiculture Limited, but it was in the coffee business, however, that he became most famous. With his father-in-law Eustace Bird and fellow Munronian Trevor Armstrong, Laurie purchased a Coffee Estate called Clifton Mount in the Blue Mountains in 1977, which became a renowned for its famous Jamaican Blue Mountain Coffee. With companion company Coffee Traders Limited, the family business exported coffee to most of the major markets around the world.

As Chairman of the Munro College Board of Governors, Sharpe presided over a period of resurgence and success for Munro College. The wind turbine was installed and the auditorium completed under his watch, and there was significant improvement in the school infrastructure. There was the provision of an incentive programs for teachers, and in academics, there was dramatic improvement in test results for Mathematics, English, and the Sciences, and a dramatic increase in the number of boys gaining academic scholarships.

The sports programme was also enhanced by refurbishing the infrastructure, including the tennis courts, football, and cricket fields. Munro improved in all sports, especially athletics, football and cricket.

Lawrence Wilmot “Laurie” Sharp was posthumously inducted in honour of his achievements as a businessman and more so for his years of stellar service to Munro College as Chairman of the School Board.

PROFESSOR THE HON. MERYVN EUSTACE MORRIS, OM, POET LAUREATE

Mervyn Eustace Morris won a full government scholarship and entered Munro College in 1948. An all-rounder, he wa s outside right on the 1st XI Hockey team, which won the Henriques Shield; one of the most successful batsmen in 1st XI cricket; was second only to Richard Roberts in badminton, and was on the tennis team which won the Alexander Cup. He was later to represent Jamaica in tennis in 1956, and helped us capture the regional Brandon Trophy. After winning the Rhodes Scholarship, he entered St. Edmund Hall, Oxford University, in 1958, and earned the Oxford Blue for three straight years for representing Oxford in tennis.

Despite all this athletic prowess, and despite once thinking that he was to become a lawyer, it is in the field of poetry that the world has come to know and revere Mervyn Morris.

Mervyn Morris is one of the most resourceful and technically brilliant of Caribbean poets. He has published six volumes of poetry, and has edited the works of many other Caribbean writers. He had the distinction of editing the great Louise Bennett-Coverley’s “Selected Poems,” when it was decided that her poems would be used in schools.

He was the recipient of some eleven major awards before being named Poet Laureate, including the CPTC Cultural Medal of Honour conferred in 2012. He was awarded the Institute of Jamaica Musgrave Silver Medal for Poetry in 1976, and the Una Marson Award for Literature in 1997. In 2006 The Government of Jamaica conferred on him the Order of Merit (OM), the fourth highest national honour.

Professor Mervyn Morris was inducted for his service to Munro as an athlete, poet, and later a teacher, but more so for his national service as a brilliant poet and professor.

Professor the Hon. Owen

St. Clair Morgan OJ

In 1950, Owen St. Clair Morgan won a scholarship offered by the Munro and Dickenson Trust, and entered Munro. He made the school athletic team, cricket team, the football team as goalie, the hockey team, and played a fair game of tennis – both table and lawn. He played the organ for morning chapel from time to time, and he was Head Perfect in 1956, Munro’s centennial year.

After studying and working abroad in Ireland, he returned to Jamaica in 1970 as Consultant Physician at the University Hospital of the West Indies, by 1980 was Consultant Neurologist, and by 1984, Professor of Medicine – the first Jamaican to be so honoured. Since 1985 he has been Adjunct Professor at the University of Miami. He was appointed Professor of Neurology at the UWI and in 1999 became Dean of The Faculty of Medical Sciences.

He is a Master of the American College of Physicians, and there are less than 300 such Masters in the world, of which he is the only one in the Caribbean. He is a member of the Association of Minority Physicians in the US, and he is a visiting professor to Canada, the US, and Tanzania.

As Chairman of the Munro and Dickenson Trust, succeeding J.O. “Jackie” Minott, he resisted the temptation to sell Munro property to augment the meagre Trust funds and guided the school safely through challenging periods.

Professor Morgan was inducted for his dedicated service to Munro College and his stellar achievements in the field of medicine and medical research and education.

Robert Hugh Munro

The late Robert Hugh Munro, an unmarried “gentleman of colour,” was a plantation owner in 18th century Jamaica.

He was the recipient of a three hundred acre patent of land in St. Elizabeth in 1765, and other patents in Clarendon, and when he died in 1797, his will of 21st January 1797, and codicil of 23rd May 1797, bequeathed the residue of his estate in trust to his nephew, Caleb Dickenson, and the Churchwardens of St. Elizabeth and their successors. His instruction was to create an endowment for a school to be erected and maintained, in the same parish, for the education of as many poor children as the funds might be sufficient to provide for and maintain.

He was buried at Leith Hall in the Parish of St. Thomas, and his remains were later re-interred in the chapel at Munro College in September 1939.

Robert Hugh Munro was posthumously inducted as one of our two founders, for his vision and generosity to instigate what has become Munro College.

Dr. Caleb Dickenson

The late Caleb Dickenson, a “gentleman of colour,” as was his uncle Robert Hugh Munro, was sent to be educated in Catterick, Yorkshire, and studied medicine. He returned to practice in St. Andrew and St. Thomas, and spent the evening of his years at his Knockpatrick estate in south Manchester, which he had inherited from his uncle Robert Hugh Munro. He died on 21st January 1821, and was buried there, earning an obituary in the Royal Gazette which prophetically ends: “…..his benevolence and charity have been the highest ornaments of his character, as they will remain the most lasting of his name.”

In 1931, his remains were brought from Knockpatrick to Munro, where they lie under the floor of the chapel.

Caleb Dickenson was the recipient of a bequest of his late uncle, Robert Hugh Munro, who willed his entire estate to Dickenson and the Churchwardens of St. Elizabeth to establish a school for the poor children of the parish. Dickenson, who became even wealthier than Munro, enlarged the funds, and left by his will of 1821 funds to establish the school and to also support the aged poor of St. Elizabeth. Unfortunately, as had been the case with his uncle’s estate, his wishes were not carried out for some time, and records indicate that no less than the then Governor of Jamaica, the Attorney General, and the Duke of Manchester, all had a dip into the money destined for Munro College and Hampton, before it was finally rescued in 1855.

Dickenson was posthumously inducted for his philanthropy and dedication in carrying out his uncles wishes to create what became Munro College.

2014

Alfred M.W. Sangster OJ, CD, JP, BSc, PhD. FJIM

Alfred Sangster attended Munro College from 1940 to 1947 and achieved good scholastic and sporting accomplishments. Although he has represented Jamaica in hockey, he was perhaps more remembered for tennis and track and field. Along with fellow inductee Hugh Hart, he was on the tennis team that won the Alexander Cup in 1947, and on the athletic teams of 1945, captained by inductee Lindy Delapenha, and of 1947, both of which won Boys Champs for Munro College. In cricket, he famously made a century against the Munro Old Boys, and earned school colours in athletics, cricket, hockey and tennis.

After gaining a 1st class honours BSc in chemistry in Ireland, he came back to Jamaica to obtain a PhD in organic chemistry while lecturing in chemistry at the UWI.

Then came his career at what was first CAST and later University of Technology, from Vice-Dean of Evening Students to President of UTECH, and for a while his name became synonymous with the institution. Fittingly, in 1996, the UTECH Auditorium was named the Alfred Sangster Auditorium.

He has been President of the Inter-collegiate Sports Association and a Member of Carreras Sports Foundation. Out of this interest in sports, he espoused the principle of local training of athletes along with colleague Dennis Johnson, and this has seen the emergence of world-class local coaches and Jamaican athletes prosper, excel, and dominate as never before.

He was a founding father and chairman of Citizens Action for Free and Fair Elections, (CAFFE) and for this initiative he received the Gleaner’s Special Award in 1999.

The Hon. Alfred Sangster, OJ, was inducted for his services in the fields of education, technology, sports, and civic activism.

HON. HUGH CECIL EDMUND HART OJ

Hugh Hart entered Munro College in 1940, was placed in Coke House. Munro by then was a Hart family tradition, as Hugh was preceded by his father, uncle, and grandfather before him, and started Munro just one year ahead of his cousin and fellow inductee Tony, who was also following his father Allan’s footsteps.

Hugh made good use of Munro in both academics and sports. In 1945 he got a Grade II in Senior Cambridge examinations, with a distinction in English Literature, and in the Higher Schools Certificate examinations in 1947, he got distinctions for History, English, Latin, and Geography.

He represented Munro and gained school colours in football, cricket, hockey, tennis, rifle shooting and athletics. Like his father Clinton before him, who won in 1919, he was an Olivier Shield winner in 1945, and played on that team with fellow inductee “Lindy” Delapenha. Again as Delapenha’s teammate, he helped Munro win Boys Champs in 1945, and did so again in 1947 with a team that included fellow inductee Alfred Sangster. Also in 1947, he teamed up with Sangster again to bring home the Alexander Cup in tennis.

Hugh Hart attended The Queens College, Oxford, and there obtained his Masters in Law while representing the college in cricket, hockey, and tennis. He was called to the Bar at Gray’s Inn, England, in 1953, and admitted as a solicitor in Jamaica in 1956.

A founding partner of the Law firm Hart Muirhead Fatta, he was named one of the leading commercial lawyers in Jamaica by the renowned Chambers Global List, and by the International Financial Law Review. He served as Senator in the Jamaican Parliament from 1980 to 1993. He was Minister of Mining and Energy from 1983-1989, and also Minister of Tourism from 1984-1989.

Along with then Prime Minister and his brother in law, Edward Seaga, aided by technocrats like Dr. Carlton Davis, it was Hugh Hart as Mining Minister introduced a series of unprecedented measures to keep the industry, and by extension, the economy, alive, after the alumna market crashed and three Jamaican bauxite companies closed down almost all at once.

The Hon. Hugh Cecil Edmund Hart, OJ, was inducted for his exploits as a schoolboy athlete and scholar, and his stellar service to the bauxite industry, Jamaican politics, and to the legal profession.

Cecil Lloyd “C Lloyd” Allen

The late “C Lloyd” Allen, son of C. Lloyd “Sugar” Allen and Mrs. Allen, entered Munro in January 1957, and such was his precociousness that he remains the only schoolboy who registered as a member of the old boys association while still in fifth form. This was truly a sign of things to come, as he indeed became the quintessential old boy.

As a student, he plunged himself into the life of Munro College, and took part in most sports, with an emphasis on tennis. The academics did not receive priority attention, but his inherent penchant for facts and his curiosity and retention skills made him a walking encyclopaedia, which he was always happy to demonstrate. His “marketplace knowledge” was later to serve him well in the commercial world.

After school, his sharp dressing and smooth talking made him a natural fit for sales and marketing, and his contribution to Munro from his perch in the corporate world has been tremendous. He became head of Insport, and through the Sports Development Commission, Munro had its two existing tennis courts resuscitated, and an additional court built. Along with other old boys – notably Laurie Sharp, Trevor Armstrong, Brando Hayden, and Dr. Paul Auden he was a great source of support to the track and field team. He was on the School Board of the 1990’s with Sharp as Chairman, and was a key figure in a number of projects.

C. Lloyd loved tennis, and continued playing to the very end. After excelling at the sport at Munro, he went on to represent Jamaica at the Brandon Trophy level, and was also later a non-playing captain for the Davis Cup team. When age eventually relegated him to play at the Masters level, he took his love of the sport into administration. He was president of the Jamaica Lawn Tennis Association for several years, and did a lot for the recognition of the sport in Jamaica. In 1978, he was instrumental in bringing the WCT Challenge Cup, part of the World Championship Tennis Circuit, to Montego Bay Jamaica, where Ilie Nastase defeated Peter Fleming in the final.

He was twice president of the Jamaica Boxing Board of Control and major critic of all presidents after him. He was active in the promotion of Jamaica’s own Commonwealth lightweight champion, Bunny Grant, who was the first Jamaican boxer to fight for a world title on home soil. In perhaps his greatest coup, he was also involved with promoter Lucien Chen in helping the Jamaican government outbid New York’s Madison Square Garden to host one-third of boxing’s most famous trilogy at the National Stadium. After the Thriller in Manila where Frazier defeated Ali, and before Ali’s legendary comeback in Zaire’s Rumble in the Jungle, Don King, Foreman, and Frazier were brought to Jamaica for the Sunshine Showdown in January 1973, where Foreman dramatically downed Frazier.

C. Lloyd Allen died in 2014, and in that year was posthumously inducted for his larger-than-life personality, his tireless work for Munro, and his national contributions to tennis and boxing.

Rev. William Simms MA, 1875-1883.

The late Mr. William Simms arrived in 1875 from England with his wife Edith and three children. In Jamaica they flourished further and produced six more children for a grand total of nine.

Enrolment when Mr. Simms arrived was 25. He immediately expanded the curriculum to include the classics, like English Literature, Latin and Greek. The results in external examinations (Cambridge Junior and Senior) were so good that the Trustees used the results in an advertisement of Potsdam.

It was he who presided over a period of transition which saved the school from premature extinction by ensuring its financial viability, and drafted the early model for Munro College as we know it today. By the time Rev. Simms left in 1883, student numbers had increased to 50 (25 free and 25 paying) and the school was left on a sustainable growth path with an enviable reputation.

Rev. Simms went on to more success at Jamaica College, from where we were later to procure Richard Roper, and where we have since deployed Ruel Reid. He is remembered as one of their great headmasters.

The Rev. William Simms was posthumously inducted for his services to Jamaican education in general, to Munro College in particular, and for his status as Munro’s first great headmaster.

Hon. William A. McConnell O.J., C.D. J.P. F.C.A.

William A. “Billy” McConnell entered Munro College in the Easter Term of 1957.

His Munro years were typified more by interest in sport than in academics, but on leaving Munro, he went to Dean Close School in the UK and then unto McGill University, Montreal, Canada, where he studied accounting.

His accounting career began at Price Waterhouse in Montreal, Canada, and then Touché Ross Thorburn in Kingston, Jamaica. His competence which intensified with his experience took him to many chairmanships and directorships in corporate Jamaica.

J. Wray & Nephew Ltd and Appleton Rum boast no small amount of historical linkages to Munro College, and Billy McConnell was to add to that history by joining the company as Financial Accountant in 1973. His rise to the top was quick, and in 1977 he became the iconic and visionary Managing Director of the J. Wray & Nephew Group of Companies. In 1990 he was made Managing Director of the parent company of J. Wray & Nephew, Lascelles De Mercado & Co. Ltd, and served until 2011. He has for over twenty years been either Vice President or Honorary Secretary of the Private Sector Organization of Jamaica (PSOJ), and has about fifteen directorships under his belt.

Not one to rest on his laurels, his latest venture is IronRock Insurance.

The Hon. William A. “Billy” McConnell, OJ, was inducted for his status as an icon in Jamaican business.

2015

Ambassador the Hon. Burchell A. Whiteman, OJ

Burchell Anthony Whiteman attended Munro College from January 1949 to 1955 on a Government scholarship. In those pre-Common-Entrance days, there were 14 of them for the entire island, one for each parish, which means he was the top student for Clarendon.

He did so well in lower third (now 1st form), that he was promoted to Lower 4th (now 3rd form) in 1950. So essentially, he skipped second form, and unlike most of us who would still be bragging about it at every possible opportunity, he remains as humble as ever.

He got his School Certificate Grade I in 1952, Higher School Certificate in 1954, and won an Exhibition University College of the West Indies (UCWI) Scholarship in 1955. His leadership abilities also led to his appointment as Head Perfect of Munro in 1954.

Whiteman won the ISSA Scholarship in 1962 and gained his first degree in English with French at the UCWI. By 1965 he gained his Master’s in Education at Birmingham University, England, and from 1965 he taught at York Castle. In 1969 he was appointed Headmaster of York Castle High School in Browns Town and in 1975 became founding Principal of the newly formed Browns Town Community College. His teaching and administration already accounted for 24 years of service by that time.

At the end of his Community College stint he entered representative politics as the PNP candidate for NW ST. Ann, successfully winning the seat in 1989 and again in 1993. In 1989, he was made Minister of Education, Youth and Culture from 1992 to 2002, where his main contribution was in the area of academic curriculum design. In 2002 he was made Minister of Information, where he commanded respect and even affection from both sides of the aisle as well as the wider public.

In 2007 he was appointed Jamaica’s representative to the Court of St. James’s, i.e. High Commissioner to London, where he served with distinction until 2009.

The Hon. Burchell Whiteman, OJ, was inducted for his stellar services to education, politics, and diplomacy.

CUSTOS ALBERT EDWARD HARRISON, BA.

The late Albert Edward “Wagger” Harrison, third-generation Jamaican and son of J.S. Harrison, Justice of the Peace of St. Elizabeth, spent about 50 of his 68 years at Munro as student and then teacher and headmaster, and in fact, like his predecessor, he died in office.

He attended Munro College, then known as Potsdam School, where he gained Class 2 honours in Senior Cambridge examinations in 1886. Upon leaving Potsdam, he became an Assistant Master at the old York Castle School in 1890, and at Jamaica College in 1891.

He returned to Potsdam in 1893 as Second Master, and served in that capacity as deputy to Headmaster William Davies Pearman for 14 years until 1907, when he took over as Headmaster on the death of Pearman, with an annual salary of 300 pounds. He was Pearman’s former student, and had also became his son-in-law when he married his daughter May Pearman.

Harrison was not the schools’ first great headmaster, but was perhaps its first legendary one.

The 125th Anniversary Munronian states that “though one cannot approve of all the methods used to accomplish the goals, one cannot deny that a great institution was developed.” It states further that “he is undoubtedly one of the prime makers of the school.”

The “methods we might not approve of” is undoubtedly a reference to his extremely liberal use of harsh corporal punishment, not with the cane, but with the supple jack. The supple jack, once a popular instrument for flogging convicted prisoners, was a climbing vine procured from Pearman Bush by an unlucky student, on whom it was tried and tested before being commissioned into active and continuous service. Legend has it that he sometimes administered canings publicly, on what are now the tennis courts, somewhat in the manner of medieval public executions.

Paradoxically, despite his famous temper, booming voice, and propensity for public floggings, he was also still described by many of his peers and indeed students as warm, kind, loveable, even, and possessing a good sense of humour, as well as being the consummate gentleman with ladies.

Building extensively on the foundation laid by the school’s founders and the headmasters before him, it was Harrison who truly created the Munro brand, and Munro College – quite literally – became Munro College under his watch.

Potsdam School was named after a German city, and the name was changed ten years into Harrison’s tenure in 1917, during World War One (then called the Great War), as Potsdam Palace was central to the German war administration. At around the same time, the school colours were changed to blue and gold from red and black, which were declared too “piratical.”

Although he stressed the value of academics over sports, Munro still became a sporting power under his leadership, and won 33 major sports trophies in his 30-year stint as headmaster: Those years also produced 41 academic scholarships, including 15 Jamaica Scholarships and 13 Rhodes Scholarships, and the school population grew from 85 to 130 during his administration.

His forte as a teacher was undoubtedly mathematics. One year in the Senior Cambridge Examinations, his students took first, second, third, and fifth places in Maths, not in Jamaica, not in the West Indies, but in the world!

On St. Patrick’s Day, March 17, 1937, Albert Harrison died unexpectedly of a ruptured appendix in the Black River Hospital. He is buried in the churchyard of the Black River Parish Church.

Custos Albert Edward Harrison was posthumously inducted for his stellar service to Munro College as its first legendary headmaster.

Dr. John A. Ewen, Ph.D.

John Ewen (centre) receives the 2001 American National Medal of Technology from then US President George W. Bush in 2002.

John Alexander Ewen was born into a Munro family, as his father and three uncles, as well as his older brother, attended Munro before him, and his father taught mathematics at Munro for a short while.

He was shipped off to Munro College at nine years old in 1954 to join his late older brother, it did not go very well. Unlike the quieter William, who went on to become a leading accountant and head of finance for the Pan-Jamaican Group of Companies, he excelled in mischief a bit more than in sports or academics.

He did ok at chemistry and maths, liked cross-country running, and dabbled in cricket and hockey, but his performance overall was no better than average, and so he left Munro after 5 years and ended up finishing high school in a place even colder than Munro, Stanstead College in Quebec, Canada. He continued his interest in chemistry there, along with picking up a bit of French, and graduated in 1963.

He came back to Jamaica and to the University of the West Indies, and there, the interest in chemistry sparked at Munro became a passion, and he finally started to do well in school. He graduated with first class honours in chemistry in 1972 and in 1979, he received his doctorate in inorganic chemistry from Tulane University in New Orleans.

His first job was at Exxon Mobile Chemical Company, where he conducted research on the synthesis of plastics and pioneered the study of metallocenes. John Ewen never invented metallocenes, any more than he invented plastic, but he found ways to make them both better and stronger and to produce them more efficiently. What he did invent, are the catalysts that enabled metals to be incorporated in polyethylene plastics, the light thin plastics usually used in packaging, as well as the denser polypropylene plastics, used in anything from automotive components to stationary and furniture.

So if you have ever used a medical IV bag or played golf, you have benefitted from the work of John Ewen, and whenever you go to the supermarket and buy vegetables or meat covered in transparent plastic wrap, or when you buy a CD or DVD, you are seeing and touching the work of John Ewen.

In 2002, at 57, he was a guest of United States President George W. Bush at the White House, where he was awarded the American National Medal of Technology, which is the highest possible award in that field, and comparable to a Nobel Prize in chemistry, for which he was actually nominated in 1993. The citation credits him for his discoveries and inventions in the field of metallocine catalysts, which revolutionized and spurred the growth of the entire industry and enhanced American leadership in the field.

Dr. John A. Ewen, alchemist, catalyst chemist, industrial research chemist and inventor, was inducted for his pioneering work in the field of global chemistry.

Ronald George Sturdy, M.A.

The late Ronald George Sturdy attended Munro College from 1925 to 1934, where he is remembered mostly as an all-round star athlete, making his name as one to watch as early as 13 years old.

Sturdy played first-11 senior football from age 15 in 1932, and in his first season was the second highest goal-scorer, with nine goals from his inside right position. His team, known as The Invincibles, which included one of the many Munro McConnells, won the Olivier Shield that year, and won again for two more years in a row. He was captain of his Perkins Shield-winning rifle shooting team, a skill which would soon serve him well; he was very good at tennis and golf, and at the 1934 edition of Boys Champs, where Munro won for the third of its eight times, Sturdy was the pole vault champion. It should be noted that in those days, the pole vault was done with bamboo.

He balanced books and sports very well, so much so that he was awarded the Rhodes scholarship to Oxford in 1936, where by 1939 he had gained his Masters from the School of Jurisprudence. The war interrupted his studies in late 1939, and he joined the Royal Navy Volunteer Reserves and became sub-lieutenant on a minesweeper that took part in the evacuation of British and Allied troops at the French seaport of Dunkirk, after the German invasion of Northern France.

In July 1940, local telegraph wires buzzed with the news that Jamaica’s first decoration of the war had been awarded to none other than Munro’s Ron Sturdy. He was awarded the French Cross of War (Croix de Guerre), the highest French decoration for bravery, for conspicuous bravery and heroic conduct in the Allied assault on Narvik in Norway and the evacuation of French troops.

He went on to see active service in the Mediterranean and the Far East before being allowed to return to civilian life and his studies, and he was called to the Bar at Gray’s Inn in 1947. He returned to Jamaica in 1948 and was immediately admitted to practice law in Jamaica, with chambers at 4 Duke Street in Kingston.

Ronald George Sturdy was posthumously inducted for his enviable record as a schoolboy athlete, scholar, war hero, and prominent attorney.

Major General Robert James Neish, C.D., A.F.C., A.D.C., J.P.

Robert James Neish attended St. Andrew Preparatory School then Munro and Jamaica Colleges.

His stay at Munro from 1949 to 1950 was brief, but intensely character – forming, and enough to provide him with a firm foundation. Family economic constraints forced him to have to leave the first choice of Munro and its boarding fees in favour of next-best option Jamaica College, as a day boy.

Straight out of school, he plunged into what he would help make a real army – Jamaica Local Forces, West India Regiment, which soon became the first battalion, Jamaica Regiment. He attended the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst; the Warminster School of Infantry; and the British army Staff College at Camberley.

He spent 15 years in the JDF Air Wing, from 1958 to 1973, where he was awarded the Air Force Cross in 1968 for the rescue of a British soldier who had fallen down a steep and deep incline at Blue Mountain Peak.

He was appointed Chief of Staff in 1979, at the rank of Brigadier, and promoted in rank to Major General in 1982. After becoming Chief of Staff, he was immediately plunged into a “baptism of fire” in the prolonged and heated run up to the 1980 election. His watchwords of “professionalism, loyalty, military discipline and impartiality” were crucial to his leadership of the army during that difficult period.

He served as Chief of Staff for 11 years until retirement in 1990, after 32 year of total service, making him the longest serving army Chief of Staff in Independent Jamaica.

After leading the Mona Rehabilitation Foundation for eight years between 1996 and 2004, Robert Neish led the Digicel Foundation as Executive Director for over seven years, and has now been promoted to the role of Executive Vice Chairman.

From as early as 1982, the government of Jamaica awarded him the Order of Distinction, Commander Class (CD) for service to his country.

An officer and a gentleman, Major General Robert James Neish, CD, was inducted for his philanthropy and his stellar service to the Jamaican military.

DR. LOUIS ASTON MARANTZ SIMPSON

After the divorce of his parents, the late Louis Aston Marantz Simpson was taken from his home in Kingston at nine years old and sent a hundred miles west to join his brother at the best school on the island, Munro College.

He was to spend eight years navigating the austerity of Munro and the fearsome headmaster “Wagga” Harrison, during which time his father remarried the proverbial evil stepmother, had another child, and abandoned Louis and his brother. He returned to Munro on his own to complete his final year, where he began to flex his literary muscles as an outlet for his pain.

A group of Jamaican movers and shakers launched a weekly newspaper called the Public Opinion in 1938, which was to be instrumental in the nation’s independence movement, and helped shape and define Jamaica’s political as well as artistic thought. Simpson, as a 16 and 17 year old schoolboy, had his poems and stories published in Public Opinion no less than nine times in 1940 before leaving Munro and Jamaica.

With no home in Kingston to return to after Munro, when his mother wrote from New York asking him if he’d like to visit after school, he had no hesitation, and left Munro with the mail van that took him to the nearest train station, in Balaclava.

In New York he ignored his pretentious mother and buried himself in his college studies at Columbia, where he was taught by legendary professor, poet, and editor, Mark Van Doren. His studies at Columbia were violently interrupted when he was drafted to serve in World War II as a combat infantryman, first with the tank corps and then with the elite 101ST Airborne Division. At the war’s end he returned to resume his studies at Columbia as a U.S. citizen and war hero, decorated with a Bronze Star and two Purple Hearts.

But he also had psychic wounds that were hard to heal, and his studies were interrupted again with a mental breakdown in 1946, and he spent six months in a mental hospital fighting off post-traumatic stress disorder, where it didn’t help that he saw a guard beat a patient to death. After recovering enough to return to writing and to Columbia, he received his Bachelor’s in English in 1948. He then spent a year studying at the University of Paris, where his first book of poetry, “The Arrivistes,” was published. He returned to Columbia to receive a master’s degree in English in 1950. He worked as an editor at the Bobbs-Merril publishing company for five years, then again returned to Columbia as a tutor, where he received his Ph.D. in 1959. He then became a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, for eight years until 1967, then joined the faculty at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, from where he retired in 1993.

Despite trying to forget her own past, his mother’s stories of her early life in Russia, stories full of poverty and rats, had influenced his writing style as much as his traumatic experiences in the war. It is said that he really wanted to write novels, but turned to poetry because shorter works were all that his ravaged mind could handle after the war. Moving to a new country after his childhood in a British colony and belatedly discovering his black and Jewish heritage had also left him with an identity crisis, but as he grew more confidently comfortable in his own skin, he also grew more confident in his own voice, and eventually revelled in his role as a quintessential commentator on American life.

He was described as the Chekhov of contemporary American poetry, and the exemplary writer of narrative poetry in America.

He was awarded the Rome Prize, given by the American Academy in Rome, in 1957; the Columbia University Medal for Excellence in 1965, the American Academy of Arts and Letters award in literature in 1976, and in 1988, was awarded the Harold Morton Landon Translation Award from the Academy of American Poets. The big one, the Pulitzer Prize, for his landmark 1963 collection “At the end of the open road,” described as a tour de force of American poetry and his stylistic watershed, was awarded in 1964.

On September 14, 2012, after battling Alzheimer’s for some time, Dr. Simpson died peacefully in his sleep at the age of 89. In accordance with a last request, we are told, he was buried wearing his Munro blazer.

Dr. Louis Aston Marantz Simpson was posthumously inducted for his achievements as a Pulitzer Prize poet and war hero, and his love of Munro College.

2016….?