Errol Walton Barrow – 100 years birthday anniversary with an eternal legacy to crown them
By Stanley Collymore
We Bajans owe a substantial amount to you Errol
Walton “Dipper” Barrow; far more in that
precise regard than the average Barbadian in his
orher own distinct and individual way could
ever totally repay.For you weren’t only a truly
distinguished, thoroughly accomplished,
and most undeniably in your life time
a very incomparable man, but were
most certainly too, and still are, to
every Bajan and, of course, all other
concurring Afro-Caribbeans a
dynamically inspirational icon
and, as well, an authentic
and a commendably,
truly unequalled
living legend!
Founder and the recognized Father of our
democratic Barbados Nation; World
War Two veteran and Royal Air
Force hero, that subsequently became our
first ever Prime Minister who on the 30
November 1966 brought to a lasting
cessation 339 years of unceasing
English and subsequently
British colonialist domination, when
most excellently and forevermore
you broke and disassembled
the influence of the British
Trident in relation to our Eastern Caribbean,
island nation. And thereupon did diligently
sow the seeds of our independence that
since then have prodigiously sprouted,
taken firm root, and vigorously
grown into the productive forest of
well-educated, democratically
rooted, and the excellent
nation of intellectuals
Barbados has richly
and most
impressively
become!
So in this our beloved Barbados: a nation globally and
well celebrated for its huge number of living and
active centenarians, while we its present day
citizens profoundly regret that on the 21 January
2020, the anniversary of your 100th birthday,
you, Sir won’t be physically here amongst
those present to answer the roll call of
our living centenarians, we’re yet
mindfully aware that in every
other conceivable way your
energizing presence will
be extensively with us all
on our very appealing
paradisiacal island
home of Barbados.
For notwithstanding the absence of your earthly
presence in 2020, your birthdate: whatever
the year or the century might be, will
most fittingly, as is currently the
situation, be a state and cultural public holiday on our
island in fitting appreciation of you Errol Walton
“Dipper” Barrow our National Hero; and the
man who courageously, intelligently and
politically guided Barbados from being
an English and afterwards a British
colonial entity to irreversibly and
positively transforming it into
becoming an authentically
democratic, quite proud
of itself and its various
attainments, a peace
loving and a most
progressive Afro–
Caribbean nation.
© Stanley V. Collymore
23 December 2019.
Author’s Remarks:
In any authentic and convincing analysis of the character and personality of Errol Walton “Dipper” Barrow it is absolutely incumbent on all those who embark on such a laudable exercise to first and foremost recognize the established fact that like every other earthly human being “Dipper” was during his temporal existence, at any rate, mortal.
However, that reality is distinctly where the similarity between him and most other humans demonstrably ended.
For to put it mildly Errol Walton Barrow was a most extraordinary person whose monumental attributes: personally, socially, professionally and politically, although well-known and markedly universally appreciated are far too innumerable to properly recount in a tribute like this one.
