(Letter to the Sports Editor)

IT is good that Keith Aaron’s academic and cricketing attainments were recognised in the article which was published in the June 5 edition of your newspaper and which was written by my friend, Frederick ‘Ginger’ Halley.
Too many of the people who have made a contribution to our society have gone to their graves, unrecognised and unsung. We are manifestly poorer for this. I want to add a few facts to this excellent article, facts which Mr Halley, being a much younger man than I am, could not have known. Keith Aaron did not simply move from Central High School to Queen’s College. In those days one could only get into Queen’s College from another High School if one did well at the GCE Ordinary Level examinations and even with that you had to be considered worthy of acceptance by the QC administration. Keith was an excellent student at Central High School and did very well at these examinations.

It was no surprise that he was selected to attend QC. In doing so he was following in the illustrious footsteps of such reputable Central High School Alumni as LFS Burnham and Mushtaq Khan. Keith Aaron was a competitive individual who seized the opportunity at Queen’s College to demonstrate his intellectual prowess as well as his cricketing skills.
Keith Aaron’s stay at Queen’s College cannot be properly considered without some recognition of the context in which it took place. Professor Seecharran in a most informative publication entitled “Muscular Learning” has pointed out that the British created a number of schools in the Caribbean whose remit was to train young men to develop their intellectual and athletic abilities.
These institutions are easily recognised from our history: Queen’s Royal College in Trinidad; Queen’s College in British Guiana; and Jamaica College in Jamaica, among others.

This circumstance in British Guiana produced, among others, Bruce Pairaudeau who played for Guyana at 16 years of age and Rupert Roopnaraine, who is one of a few ‘Cambridge Blues in the Caribbean’, and who, had fate been kinder to him, should have played for Guyana. At Queen’s College Keith Aaron’s academic and cricketing abilities flourished as Mr Halley has stated.
Keith Aaron was one of my best friends. We grew up together in Kitty. I knew his parents very well – his father Reginald and his mother who was a fine player of the piano. Keith and I met again at Central High School where we played cricket and interacted a lot as we navigated the road to adolescence and manhood.
And we were both fortunate to play for the first Guyana School Boys cricket team in 1966. In every team in which we were together Keith Aaron was a team player of the first order.

I finish this letter with an incident that captures the essence of Keith’s character. It happened that with the passage of time I had forgotten that he was a member of the team which played against Barbados, the first match in the 1966 series.
When I told Keith that I could not remember him being in the team he was quite upset. He protested in a quiet and refined manner, as he was never loud or aggressive in what he said and did. The silken approach was preferred. Within days I felt the effect of Keith’s diplomacy. I got an irate call from the man who is now Dr Vincent Adams.
How could I forget that Keith, that he and Keith were in the team in Barbados? Adams said that I had forgotten because Keith played as a batsman and Stanley Kallicharran kept wicket.

The penny had dropped. I remembered Keith’s presence in the team and made the confession. I thought that was the end of the matter.
Shortly afterwards I made my way to New York. I was staying with my brother when Dr Adams and Keith Aaron turned up. I was ribbed mercilessly by a voluble Adams and a more gentle and soft-spoken Keith Aaron. Not for the first time in my life I discovered that Keith Aaron, though modest, simple and refined in thought and action, was one of the most tenacious human beings I have known.
I will miss him as I will those members of my generation who are being thinned out by death with a regularity that is frightening as it is ominous.

Yours Sincerely

R M Austin
Ambassador