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Remembering Elliston Wakeland ... the right way
PAUL A REID, Observer West writer
Thursday, August 17, 2006STEPPING OUT. Elliston and Edith Wakeland on their way to a formal function in the 1960s
Whenever he passes the sign depicting the Wakeland sports centre in Falmouth, Trelawny, Kenneth Dewar, the 73-year-old legally adopted son of Elliston and Edith Wakeland, gets confused.
"I drive past the centre from time to time and I see the sign with the name spelt wrong and I have always wondered who was responsible for that," he says.
The sign, which seeks to honour the legacy that Elliston Wakeland bequeathed to the people of Trelawny, reads 'Elletson Wakeland Centre'.
Kenneth Dewar, the adopted son of Elliston and Edith Wakeland
However, according to Dewar and Custos Royland Barrett, Trelawny's unofficial historian, the spelling distorts the memory of the man whose legacy outlived his short political career as a member of parliament.
Born Elliston Harvey Wakeland on June 10, 1902, he died in 1967 while still serving as an MP.
According to Dewar, Wakeland believed in serving people, no matter where they were from or who they supported. He was always fond of saying 'love knows no bounds'.
The gregarious and energetic Dewar, who still works as a sign painter, tells the Observer West he called Wakeland and his wife "papa and mama" after he went to live with them and their four children in their Wakefield home.
He describes his time in the Wakeland household as "paradise", saying that the couple spoiled him to the point where he had a little difficulty when he eventually went to live on his own.
He says neither Mr nor Mrs Wakeland would allow anyone who came into contact with them to go away hungry, and recalls that when workers turned up on their farm in the mornings the first thing the couple would ask them was if they had eaten breakfast. Mrs Wakeland, Dewar says, would encourage the workers to cook lunch with provisions she and her husband provided.
While Elliston was a Jamaica Labour Party candidate for the area, his cousin Luther Stillman Wakeland represented the People's National Party. But, according to Dewar and Barrett, that meant nothing in those days, as political opponents showed each other respect.
Dewar now lives in Hague Heights where he is a caregiver to Luther Stillman Wakeland's 99-year-old widow, Eunice.
Barrett remembers Wakeland as a man who would walk the streets and was always lending money to people or just giving to the needy.
Custos Barrett recalls that Elliston had defeated his cousin Luther in one election and Cedric Titus in another. He points out that Elliston Wakeland lived a few chains from Cedric Titus in Clarks Town and both are buried in the Baptist church graveyard, side by side.
Elliston's son, Cedric, was also a politician, Custos Barrett recalls, and was a former mayor of the town.
The custos remembers that "successive governments in the 1960s had gone on a land reclamation project" in the town of Falmouth.
Elliston Wakeland, he says, had given the parcel of lands on which the community centre is currently located to the people of the town as a recreation area. He went further, the Custos says, by acquiring funds from the government that he used to build the clubhouse.
PAUL A REID, Observer West writer
Thursday, August 17, 2006STEPPING OUT. Elliston and Edith Wakeland on their way to a formal function in the 1960s
Whenever he passes the sign depicting the Wakeland sports centre in Falmouth, Trelawny, Kenneth Dewar, the 73-year-old legally adopted son of Elliston and Edith Wakeland, gets confused.
"I drive past the centre from time to time and I see the sign with the name spelt wrong and I have always wondered who was responsible for that," he says.
The sign, which seeks to honour the legacy that Elliston Wakeland bequeathed to the people of Trelawny, reads 'Elletson Wakeland Centre'.
Kenneth Dewar, the adopted son of Elliston and Edith Wakeland
However, according to Dewar and Custos Royland Barrett, Trelawny's unofficial historian, the spelling distorts the memory of the man whose legacy outlived his short political career as a member of parliament.
Born Elliston Harvey Wakeland on June 10, 1902, he died in 1967 while still serving as an MP.
According to Dewar, Wakeland believed in serving people, no matter where they were from or who they supported. He was always fond of saying 'love knows no bounds'.
The gregarious and energetic Dewar, who still works as a sign painter, tells the Observer West he called Wakeland and his wife "papa and mama" after he went to live with them and their four children in their Wakefield home.
He describes his time in the Wakeland household as "paradise", saying that the couple spoiled him to the point where he had a little difficulty when he eventually went to live on his own.
He says neither Mr nor Mrs Wakeland would allow anyone who came into contact with them to go away hungry, and recalls that when workers turned up on their farm in the mornings the first thing the couple would ask them was if they had eaten breakfast. Mrs Wakeland, Dewar says, would encourage the workers to cook lunch with provisions she and her husband provided.
While Elliston was a Jamaica Labour Party candidate for the area, his cousin Luther Stillman Wakeland represented the People's National Party. But, according to Dewar and Barrett, that meant nothing in those days, as political opponents showed each other respect.
Dewar now lives in Hague Heights where he is a caregiver to Luther Stillman Wakeland's 99-year-old widow, Eunice.
Barrett remembers Wakeland as a man who would walk the streets and was always lending money to people or just giving to the needy.
Custos Barrett recalls that Elliston had defeated his cousin Luther in one election and Cedric Titus in another. He points out that Elliston Wakeland lived a few chains from Cedric Titus in Clarks Town and both are buried in the Baptist church graveyard, side by side.
Elliston's son, Cedric, was also a politician, Custos Barrett recalls, and was a former mayor of the town.
The custos remembers that "successive governments in the 1960s had gone on a land reclamation project" in the town of Falmouth.
Elliston Wakeland, he says, had given the parcel of lands on which the community centre is currently located to the people of the town as a recreation area. He went further, the Custos says, by acquiring funds from the government that he used to build the clubhouse.
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