A Tribute to Major Patrick Skeete
November 2023
Scrolling through the shared record of his origins within the cradle of our Waterford civilization, I find that Patrick Skeete was climbing into that incubator just as I was climbing out. 1966, the year he entered this hallowed place was precisely the year I graduated from it—as a student for. really, I refused to leave it even then, and stayed on for just one more year, my first on the teaching staff, before going off to the university overseas. Mine was a blessed reluctance, for though I did not have the great good fortune to teach him then or ever in my subsequent years of service, it is clear that he began taking my measure and the measure of his surroundings very early in his first year of adjustment.
Earlier this year, as we connected in a long telephone call, he in Barbados, I in Louisiana, USA, he revived for me an image of myself coming to his Lower 1B on several occasions to do relief periods for absent colleagues. The memories he evoked suggest to me that his imagination was awakening early to the exercise of the teaching and learning process. Most relief teachers, he recalled, would merely instruct the class to get out a book and do some quiet reading .
In marked contrast, he told me, he was impressed by my habit of making myself comfortable sitting on the master’s desk and engaging the boys’ attention (the school was still exclusively a boys’ domain) by defining for them the exceptional meaning of their admission to this place, the untold possibilities it would hold for their future, and the equally onerous obligations it would place on them to pass on the school’s legacy and their good fortune to others less privileged than themselves.
Patrick Skeete modelled in full measure those possibilities, that legacy and those obligations in his roles as schoolboy, in his practice as a teacher, and in his example as a cadet leader.
Though his paths as a schoolboy and mine as a teacher intersected to a great degree, my earlier observation that I never enjoyed the rare pleasure of having actually taught him remains for me a source of palpable regret. The plaudits of my colleagues who were so highly favouredby good fortune, and the awe and envy of his classroom peers who had to compete with his academic superiority and worked together to make him a true legend in his time. As I recall it, he came first in nearly every form of which he was a member. His excellence was especially distinguished in modern languages, French and Spanish. But it transcended these in his mastery of English language and literature, mathematics, geography and history, among others.
In his capacity as a teacher, he brought similarly sterling gifts to the teaching of French and Spanish. Having taught both these subjects myself, I had repeated occasions to collaborate with him in lesson planning and examination development. I am aware of the energy and enthusiasm he brought to enriching the merely textbook academic dimensions of language teaching and learning. He took every opportunity to motivate his students to sharpen their speaking skills and enlarge their cultural horizons by promoting their participation in travel to neighbouring islands relevant to the languages they were learning in the classroom. Intellectual seriousness and gifted talent characterized his dedication to the disciplines of teaching within himself and learning in his students. His example as a devoted teacher in the proficiencies of language lit the path that many a student of his would walk to emulate his footsteps.
His promise and qualities as a leader in extracurricular activities emerged early in his school life. In the prefect corps, he limned the ranks from subprefect, prefect, all the way to School Captain. But it was as a cadet and cadet officer that he displayed perhaps his most outstanding capabilities as a paragon of military discipline and leadership. While I am unable to portray his military training and leadership with the credibility of a comrade-at-arms (as I never enlisted in No. 3 Company), as a student and staff member of Combermere School I was always respectfully observant of their activities and deeply admiring of their discipline. The schoolboy who became CUO of the Company and later Major in the Defence Force played a signal part in shaping the permanent image I carry with me of Patrick Skeete the student in the classroom, the cadet in uniform and the and the officer on the parade square.
Reading and listening to the effusive praise showered upon him by contemporary schoolmates and officers, these two themes struck me with profound resonance. Patrick Skeete lived and breathed Combermere. Patrick Skeete bled blue and gold. Searching my own memory and consciousness for a definitive image, I keep returning to the way he embodied greatness and goodness: He wore them in that understated way that is often the mark of men and women of honour.
True greatness is often coupled with humility and unassuming self-confidence. In him nature harmonised in proportionate measure the disciplines of the parade square, the precise marksmanship of the firing range, and the rigours and excitement of marching and camping around different locations around Barbados and in countries abroad. In him Combermere produced the perfect paradigm of our highest aspirations for mighty undertaking.
To end this tribute I append two passages of poetry that knit together Major Skeete’s place in our pride and affections, and taps into the deep wells of faith and belief he shared with many of us.
What though the radiance which was once so bright
Be now for ever taken from [our]sight,
Though nothing can bring back the hour
Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower;
We will grieve not, rather find
Strength in what remains behind;
In the primal sympathy
Which having been must ever be;
In the soothing thoughts that spring
Out of human suffering;
In the faith that looks through death,
In years that bring the philosophic mind.
(from William Wordsworth, “Ode on Intimations oof Immortality.”)
We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.”
(William Shakespeare, The Tempest
To his wife Eartha, his children, grandchildren, relatives, all those he loved and who loved him, I extend my profound sympathies. May he rest in peace and rise in glory.
Keith Sandiford
Professor Emeritus
Distinguished Professor
