Gordon Robinson | Leadership from Herbie and Blakey

After my tribute to horseracing legend Chris Armond (including a schoolboy cricket story, featuring my opening partnership with Herbie Chong) was published, my friend Herbie sent email feedback.

He wrote, inter alia:

“…thanks for reminiscing those wonderful form matches, and maybe one day I will have the opportunity to broadcast that YOU were always the best dressed batsman at the wicket.

I have already been broadcasting from 1970 that YOU were the brightest student in 4B … Until Stephen Blake skipped third form to 4th.”

Ah, Stephen Blake.

Memories suddenly came flooding back. I apologise if I’ve told this story before, but since I can’t remember what I had for breakfast this morning …

I don’t need a woodwind section to proclaim that my Campion class (1965-69) was full of the best and brightest. If your average fell below 90, you weren’t in the top ten. It was a matter of personal pride to do well. Campion had an incentive scheme that, each term, offered points for high averages and extra-curricular activity. If you accumulated a high threshold in both categories over five years, you were inducted into Campion’s Honour Society. Your name was placed in gold on a plaque outside the headmaster’s office.

It was a big deal back then. Boys strove mightily to achieve that glorious quest. Two from my class made it to the golden plaque. That excellent system has probably been discontinued.

On the way there, the contest was fierce but fair. We were going along merrily up to the end of fourth form’s first term. After Christmas break, we returned in January to continue friendly rivalry among respected equals. But, when we entered the classroom there was a strange boy, slimly built and bespectacled, who arrived first and sat authoritatively at a front-row desk as if it was his. The Top Ten huddled immediately. Who was this upstart? Was he so dumb he couldn’t find his classroom? What’s going on?

The school grapevine soon introduced him as Stephen Blake – a third former. Wha, wha, WHAT? According to the grapevine, his mother complained to Headmaster that he wasn’t being “challenged”, so he was skipped to fourth form. Into. Our. Class!

We decided then and there, this ‘hurry-come-up’ would be put in his place. No way was he finishing among the Top Ten. Ideally, he’d finish last. Well, at the end of that term he finished first with a 99 average. At the end of the next term (final fourth-form term) he finished first with a 99 average. Thereafter, we pretended we weren’t trying.

Blakey grew on us, and by the time he left Campion after fifth form to go to MIT (unheard of in those days), we were friends. But I did have the last laugh, as I pipped him on the line for the Archbishop Carter Medal (as it then was) for the best student in the graduating class, mainly because he refused to do extra-curricular. I subsequently discovered the teachers’ vote was a tie and the Headmaster used his casting vote in my favour. He probably came to regret that.

LEADERSHIP

I didn’t hear from Stephen for 50 years, but recently, some ‘old boys’ from my class, including him, have been gathering on email and telephone. Since I still haven’t caught up with that modern invention, the telephone, I participate by email.

They are all leaders in their field. Herbie Chong, with his talented wife Michelle, built Honey Bun from scratch to a shining example of what entrepreneurship and business acumen can do. He’s also an avid horseman, having owned many high-quality racehorses, including Classic winner Bruceontheloose and two-year-old sensation Princess Popstar.

In those days, Campion taught leadership in thought, word and deed. I’ve no idea what today’s curriculum looks like, but based on their contentious leadership styles, it seems neither Mark Golding nor Peter Bunting learned leadership lessons there. On the other hand, Andrew Holness seems to have learned leadership somewhere as, after a contest as bruising as any initiated by Rise Disunited, he found pathways to success for almost every opponent.

Peace and love!

Gordon Robinson is an attorney-at-law. Email feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com.