At about 1:20 pm on Saturday, May 24 th last, the call came. “Donovan is no longer with us,” said one of his lieutenants. The news was neither a shock nor a surprise, because a few days before, Fortis Ronnie Chin had called me on a matter, and in conversation he informed me that: “It might not be long.” The following day after gathering my thoughts, I called the only man I knew who knew Donovan well – Dr. Tony Keyes (Keyes). But not only did Keyes know Donovan well, but Tony has never failed in times such as this, to provide level-headed perspective.
It was Las Talbot who once told me, that in Michigan before I arrived, if anything went-down in East Lansing, Keyes was the man everybody – both those who had come before, and those who would come after – would look to, for perspective and sanity. And so, why deviate from the script? Besides, before he became reclusive, whenever Donovan and I spoke by phone, he’d always enquire about Tony – `Townie’ to him.
“As a youngster coming into KC (from Merl Grove) in 1960,” recalled Keyes when we spoke, “he (Donovan) took me under his wing and gave me confidence.” Imagine Keyes in need of confidence, I mused to myself!
“I first went to Champs in 1961,” recalled Keyes, “and even though he (Donovan) was not yet the coach, I remember him walking with me up to Sabina from KC, talking to me along the way, calming me and instilling confidence.” Funnily, fifty-two (52) years or so after, when Keyes put Donovan in touch with me, he gave me the same confidence – the confidence to write whatever came into my head and to stand by the positions I took which I would share with him. “If that’s the way you see it, then…,” he’d often say.
Linking With Donovan:
But how did I link with Donovan, some might ask. Because when I began attending KC in January 1963, Mr. Davis was a big man to me, and I was what you’d call in those days, a `likkle-bway’! And so, our paths did not cross when I was at KC. More accurately, I ensured that my path did not cross his. But as Keyes reminded, it was he who told Donovan to get in touch with me to write on KC’s first sojourn to Penn Relays to help commemorate the 50 th anniversary of the event. Sometime earlier, I had delved into the history of Jamaican soccer players at Michigan State University for the KCtimes, and Keyes might have been impressed enough to suggest that I write the bit on Penn. In any event, I took notes from Donovan and Tony by-phone to come up with `We Just Went to Run’
https://www.kctimes.org/articles.aspx?articleid=1571&kcedtn=1025 done also for the KCtimes.
As I told Keyes when we were reminiscing on Donovan, it was not my intention to stick-around after we had collaborated on the commemorative article. But one thing led to another, and we continued speaking by phone, discussing this-n-that, up to about Christmas last. We, I think, both found some cadence of thought particularly when it came to `Matters Jamaica’. But our first face-to-face meeting, was when Keyes invited me to that April 2014 running of the Penn Relays.
There Donovan was in his element, but not outwardly so, because he was not one to let-on to others how he really felt. But there at the event, there was a certain glow on his face and contentment in his smile which could not betray his blissfulness. “If only the others were here,” I heard him quietly say. That too, was an event I was privileged recorded in `KC at Penns’
https://www.kctimes.org/articles.aspx?articleid=1636&kcedtn=1028 for the KCtimes.
Not long after, I started a blog circulated to about thirty or so people of whom he was one. “That was something else,” Fortis Patrick Johnson would not too long ago remind, mainly because of the head-to-heads between Fortis Basil Waite a.k.a. `the little village lawyer’ and myself. In the blog, I would take on all sorts of Jamaican issues – mostly controversial ones. I was the ringmaster who wrote as he pleased and held no cow sacred.
But here’s the thing.
Whenever I broached a controversial topic, I would at times wince and quietly ask myself: “What might Donovan think of me, writing about this?” And to my surprise, instead of being hauled-up, I’d often receive a private e-mail from him saying something like: “You forgot to include this.” It was as if he was egging me on, and it was only recently when I deep-dived into his memoir ` Nuff Lemonade’ that I realized that he shared my disgust for classism, elitism and yes, racism, in our beloved Jamaica.
The Memoir:
I can’t put my finger on it as to exactly why I put down his memoir after only getting through the first 40 or so pages. But in reading it in its entirety recently, I am only now beginning to realize why.
The early part of my life was not nearly as tumultuous as his. But some of his recalls – like the thrill he got from visiting Hope Gardens; working as a wrapper on Kings Street; the elation of knowing that he was admitted into KC; the fact that `Bishop’ had held him back a year from taking the Higher School Certificate exam; or that Mama had saved up from her modest means to send him on his way to university in Canada, all resonated with me. Then there was the case of `family and color in Jamaica’ – matters which I could broach easily with him.
“At one stage of his life, Donovan wasn’t quite sure whether to consider himself white or black,” surmised Keyes. To that – except for his relating the experience of using a restroom in the segregated South on a Greyhound bus journey enroute to Canada to start his university studies in Saskatchewan – I can not speak. But what I can speak to, was his abhorrence of how Blacks and lower-class Jamaicans were treated in his time growing up in Jamaica. And in his memoir Donovan singled-out the Evon Blake incident at the Myrtle Bank Hotel swimming pool, as his Exhibit 1. That I suspect, stuck in his craw till-death.
What I also gathered from reading the memoir was his early industriousness, his striving for independence, his thrift and his ambition to be somebody (`smaddy’ as he put it). And those tenets explained why he did not suffer fools easily. More disgusting to him, were people who got an opportunity to travel abroad, and did not make full use of it. And most disgusting, were able-bodied mendicants. Donovan was mostly self-made. “I never took a Phys-ed class in my life,” he once told me. And yet he became a champion schoolboy track & field coach. But a circumstance surrounding his memoir told other tales.
Shortly after its publication, Donovan sent me a gift-copy. Nevertheless, I promptly mailed him payment because as I said to him: “Donovan, I know how much work you have put into this thing. And you should not be giving away copies for free.” “I give them to my friends,” he shot back. But this is what I know – that he was a little disappointed with me for not reading it completely, reviewing it and then getting back to him as to what I had thought of it. “I guess that’s not your type of book,” he said to me with a hint of pique after his second phone call enquiring if I had finished reading it.
The thing Donovan didn’t realize though, was that ‘Nuff Lemonade’ is a deeply moving memoir which like a glass of fine wine, is best sniffed and swirled, before being sipped. He might have wanted me to gulp it. But to do it the justice it deserved, I did not, or, could not.
Even after I learnt of his passing and took it up again in earnest, I found myself ruminating on some of his entries. Because it placed me back in a time which I remembered with mostly fondness. It also revealed to me a lot about Donovan and some of his relationships of which we never spoke. “Donovan was a very private person,” Keyes recalled. “And so even the severity of his illness, I didn’t quite know about.” But why did Donovan enquire more than once, if I had read his memoir? And might his inscription in my copy, not have provided a hint? It reads: `For Ray – Now I have no more secrets! Fortis! Donovan!”
I don’t consider myself a `nosey’ person and so I never enquired about his life. But as calm and collected as he came across, I could never have imagined his early life being so itinerant and so skimpy. And were those his `secrets’ he was insisting that I know? As if he wanted to tell me through his writings: “Never let your circumstances hold you back.”
He began writing it if I’m not mistaken, about the time I began my second master’s degree. He had enrolled in a writing program at a local university, `as therapy’ as he put it, after losing his youngest son Troy. We would discuss his writing program often, and every now and then he’d send me a copy of a writing assignment that he had turned in. “How does this sound?” he’d often ask. Was I then being considered the teacher, and he the pupil? And was he looking to get a grade from me? These things of course, I’ll never know.
I met Donovan in my early 60’s – at a time when most people my age felt that they knew everything – at a time though, when I welcomed guidance and grounding. In a man’s life, there are three distinct stages – ascent, cruise and descent. My mother taught me how to ascend. I found out on my own, how to cruise. But it was Donovan who guided me as to what a descent might be. He was quietly adamant in his views, efficient with his time, and generous with his information, knowledge and property, to a fault.
If I was writing on the history of Sabina Park or on the tragic demise of the social commentator Peter Abrahams, he would chip in with titbits I’d never have known. On the latter, he would send me from his library, his copies of `Tell Freedom’, and ‘Mine- Boy’ – two books written by Abrahams. And on one occasion when I told him I was going to Jamaica, he allowed me to stay at his home there in Kingston. And so to me, Donovan was the epitome of kindness.
Donovan, Tony and me:
As I have said, to Donovan and also to Keyes, I considered myself `a likkle-bway’, and so understandably, there were somethings I was never told – at least up until now.
That Donovan and Keyes had a lengthy estrangement, I was never before privy. Donovan tells half of the story in his memoir – that Tony didn’t take kindly to being hauled up before then headmaster Mr. Douglas Forrest to be told: “You will go to Penn Relays.” That edict Keyes would long remember, because he had so much wanted to represent Jamaica on an Under-19 football team to Guatemala, which he was asked to captain. But `Dougs’ put down the letter of the law - `school before country’, and Keyes felt that Donovan had something to do with it.
“Look,” Keyes said recently, “I was a footballer at-heart who could run fast. But Donovan considered me track-man who could play football.” There was though, another side to this standoff.
According to Keyes, when it was school-leaving time, Donovan gave most of his attention to `Billy’ (Miller) and `Rupie’ (Hoilette), helping them prepare for college board exams, and little to him. “It was as if I was left on my own, and it was (Dr) Keith Young who helped me,” recalled Keyes. “After years of not speaking, we met in Washington D.C. and discussed it all. And to his credit, he gave me almost a full chapter in his memoir,” Keyes acknowledged with gratitude. And so, all was well between them, because it all ended well. But there is another side to this story which after sixty (60) years, I’m only now learning.
At the first running of Penn Relays when Lennox (Miller) pulled up in anguish at the 4 x 110 tape, Keyes thought that he himself should have been inserted in the mile-relay team. “I know I could have run ‘sub-50’ from a standing start. And yet they chose to run ‘Billy’ with his sick foot.” Who was `they’, I did not ask.
I headed this section `Donovan, Tony and me’, because in talking to Donovan he’d often ask: “When last have you spoken with Tony?” And in talking to Keyes, he’d often ask me something similar: “When last have you spoken to Donovan?” I found that a little strange but did not enquire of either, as to why I was being asked, not knowing that there might still have been a little frostiness between them. But here’s the other side of that relationship.
Out of the blue one evening Donovan called me raising hell. “Look how much Tony has done for you,” he said quite angrily. “And you mean to say, that you can’t do `that’ for Tony?’ he asked accusingly. That `that’ was me going over to Michigan State University to auger for Keyes to be inducted into that university’s sports hall of fame. I stood my ground insisting that trying to do so was above my pay grade. “Go to hell,” Donovan told me in no uncertain terms. But by then our friendship was too strong to be disturbed by his flash of anger.
In his memoir, Donovan writes highly of Tony, and has always insisted that it was Keyes’s third leg in the first 4 x 110 final at Penn, ran `quintessentially’ according to him, that brought glory to KC, and notoriety to him. And so, Donovan as I saw it, would move mountains for Tony.
“But Donovan, I’m only a likkle-man,” I told him. “I cannot move that mountain for Tony.” But he would have none of it. “You only claim `likkle-man’ when it suits you.” On that score, I said nothing more. But for once, Donovan was wrong. He was equating proximity, to power. I might have been living withing walking-distance of the Michigan State campus, but I did not have the sort of power Donovan envisioned. I was just his lowest hanging fruit.
Donovan’s Funny Side:
So, one night as I recalled in `A Joyous Champs-Week’ https://www.kctimes.org/articles.aspx?articleid=1723&kcedtn=1031 , we were up by his good friend Ruddy McHugh. Ruddy’s wife Joy had prepared a bowl-full of sprat and some soft-fresh hard dough bread. I had not had sprats – one of my favorite Jamaican dishes – for some time, and as it appeared, neither did Donovan. The heaped bowl came down to the last two, and Donovan began to `give me the eye’. “Damn,” I said to Ruddy, “this man looks like he’d kill me if I touched them!” To which Donovan just said: “You got that right!”
Then when we visited with his friend Dr. Lennie Miller the Sunday after Champs, I forgot what I had said which caused the host to look over his glasses and snarl: “Yu si all you!” Donovan immediately deserted me: “Lennie, I just met him, so do as you please!”
Donovan’s Thoughtfulness:
Finally, in reading Donovan’s memoir, he appeared never to forget a good deed done to him. And so, I am taking a leaf from his book.
Two Februarys ago, when there was a tragic shooting on the Michigan State University campus, Donovan was the only person to call that night and ask: “Ray, are you okay?” That meant a lot to me.
A Letter to `Double-D’:
Dear `Double-D’, Ray Ford here:
I know that you are now busy making the rounds, reacquainting yourself with long-gone family and friends. And I can just imagine you holding court. But hear this.
I took your memoir with me on a vacation to Barbados the week after your transitioned, and it was good company to me. I read some of it at 34,000 feet on my way down and back up, and also first thing in the mornings, overlooking the vastness of the Caribbean Sea. Because I figured that you were either somewhere up there or somewhere out there. But let me say this.
Your memoir was one of the best books I’ve ever read. And that – as life would have it – I never got to tell you this over the phone, is something I regret. But as you wrote on one of your pages: `Nothing happens before its time’. And at this particular point, the time is right. But hear this:
I am now recommending that not only every Fortis-person, but every Jamaican buy a copy of your splendid memoir.
On another score, let me say this. The last eleven (11) years of my life, have been unarguably my most fulfilling. And for that, at least in-part, I owe you a debt of gratitude.
I so much appreciated your candidness mixed with your carefulness; your generosity mixed with your gratitude; your sense of humor void of flippancy; your encouragement void of criticism; and the life lessons you taught me. The privilege was mine.
“Walk-Good!”