–The Wise Old Doc of Home!
MY good friend, Jomo, hardly calls, but when he does, it’s either good or bad news. So, when he called early on August 2, I hesitated before answering; when I picked up, Jomo was very brief: “Good Morning, Comrade,” he said softly. “Brother Roger Luncheon passed this morning…”
Jomo spoke through a loop in his throat, having known Roger very well, and for very long.
The son of veteran retired People’s Progressive Party (PPP) Parliamentarian, Shirley Edwards, Jomo served in the Presidential Guard, and knew Roger both as Head of the Presidential Secretariat (HPS) and a leading member of the PPP.
Last February, I’d indeed seen Dr. Luncheon’s name, in unusually huge letters, on a fixed signboard in the main car park for senior staff at the Office of the President.
But I had no idea Roger’s headlights had moved from low-beam to dim, or that he now walked with a walker, or had to be wheeled by chair.
Not that I’d known Roger to be athletic. On the contrary, he was always “too busy” to attend unnecessarily long meetings; hardly ever had time for recreation in public, and would even leave a Party congress to attend to a medical emergency, without asking, ‘Who?’
Dr. Luncheon’s health had been failing him for some time, but the Party and family, friends and others observed the privacy he deserved, particularly while undertaking surgical and other sensitive medical treatment, in and out of hospital.
For the last six months, there were many suggestions that Dr. Luncheon was “going anytime now…”
But, obviously, as Jomo told me outside Shirley’s home in Lodge back in February, “Roger just ain’t ready to go…”
Fast-forward eight years, and if the goodly doctor had the godly fortune of actually being able to choose the date and time of his ultimate departure from his earthly domain, the Wise Old Doc of Home (as I liked referring to him) couldn’t have chosen a better day.
He died just after 4:30am on August 2, the third anniversary, to the day, of the PPP/Civic finally taking office, after the shameful 2020 electoral debacle that had left the winning party out in the cold for five months, after the real losers refused to accept their loss.
Dr. Luncheon lived long enough to see, just five months after August 2020, US President Donald Trump also borrow from the APNU-AFC coalition’s elections playbook, and likewise refuse to accept he’d lost.
The doctor would defy the fabled Grim Reaper between 2015 and 2020, and would return to the Presidential Secretariat (as an adviser to President Dr. Irfaan Ali) in November 2020.
He’d already served previously (between 1992 and 2015) as HPS, Cabinet Secretary, Secretary for Defence, Chairman of the National Insurance Scheme (NIS) and Government’s chief spokesman.
The excellent communicator he was always allowed Dr. Luncheon to carefully, slowly and easily spell out facts and figures, statistics and comparative indices, with such linguistic clarity and simplicity that eliminated any need for follow-up questions or clarifications.
The defiant fighter in him also ensured the ‘Doc’ saw his 74th birthday on July 16, and lived to see the dawn of the third anniversary of the PPP’s sixth return to office since 1992.
Dr. Luncheon’s PPP journey was almost five decades long, during which time he served the Party and country bravely, loyally, and honestly at all levels, and also always at great sacrifice to himself and family.
He walked and worked, talked and taught with every fluid ounce of blood, and every bit of bone and flesh, for as long as his body would allow, even in the darkest of times after his vision basically bade him goodbye.
Ashton Chase’s death would eventually bring Dr Luncheon out of the dark shadows of his rapidly-declining health, as Guyanese paid attention to the fall of the last man standing from among the PPP’s founding members.
With Chase gone, all thoughts automatically flowed in the direction of the remaining Afro-Guyanese stalwarts with long PPP legacies, many of whom have also died since August 2, 2020, among them the late fiery trade unionist and parliamentarian Cyril Belgrave, and Philomena ‘Fireball’ Sahoye-Shury.
I also had the distinct pleasure of knowing and working with Brindley Benn, and once meeting his legendary wife, Mrs. Patricia Benn, a former head of the Women’s Progressive Organisation (WPO), the PPP’s women’s arm, who also spoke at the graveside of the legendary Kowsilla at Leonora in 1964. Kowsilla was crushed by a tractor during that year’s political protests against the PPP being cheated out of office.
I’d also learnt in Guyana about another brave PPP heroine, Jessie Burnham, who, with her brother, Forbes, had been among the resolute Afro-Guyanese in the leadership of the PPP.
Indeed, Jessie would pen a popular and stinging rebuke of her brother, Linden Forbes Sampson (LFS) Burnham, when he broke with the PPP in 1964 to cheat it out of office through a post-election alliance (or marriage of political convenience) between Burnham’s People’s National Congress (PNC) and the United Force (UF).
Jessie’s telling chronicle was entitled, ‘Beware My Brother Forbes!’
Another indication of the level of Afro- Guyanese support for the PPP back then was the fact that one-thirds of the 34 PPP activists arrested and detained in the 1964 battle for democracy were Black.
The likes of me would enjoy drifting down memory lane, in the positivity of selective amnesia, every time such a stalwart goes, from my attendance at the funeral of EMG (Earl Maxwell Gladstone) Wilson, where Dr. Jagan cried while delivering the tribute to this lifelong supporter and leading PPP activist and organiser in Beterverwagting (BV), on Guyana’s East Coast.
During my six years living and working in Guyana (1993-1999), before and after my memorable ‘multi-everything’ wedding at the Brickdam Cathedral (August 2, 1996), I also had the good fortune of growing close to Shirley (Edwards) and her family in Lodge.
I also occasionally talked to the ever-silent and resilient Agriculture Minister Clinton Collymore, and parrying with Georgetown Mayor & City Council Chair, ‘Fireball’ Sahoye-Shury.
And then there were Brentnol Evans and Sam Hinds, both of Linden fame, the former to become Guyana’s Consul-General to New York and the latter to be Prime Minister in 1992 and President in 1996 after President Dr. Cheddi Jagan died.
And then there’s Eddi Rodney (Walter’s brother), whose vast accumulated knowledge of Guyana and world history still very easily flows from his memory to his fountain pen whenever he has to write for the PPP’s weekly newspaper, ‘The Mirror’.
Dr. Luncheon grew up in the PPP in the shadows of all these stalwarts, gone and still-around, whose earlier (pre-1980s) examples and sacrifices will also have influenced his decision to live and die serving the only Party he trusted all his life.
The ‘Doc’ is being spoken of today, just as he’ll always be remembered.
He was referred to (several years ago) as a wise man who wore his white beard “as a Badge of Honour” of his long life of “Service to Guyana and PPP, as a fearless Servant of the Public!”
For me, however, while Roger’s gone, he’ll never go away!
