CULTURAL Guyanese icon, Ian Mc Donald, is doing a series of articles about the great individuals he has met. I plan to do something similar.
As I reflect on my 35-year career in journalism, I realise that I have deeply wronged the individuals who selflessly contributed to making my life rich and fulfilling. These individuals truly molded me into the person I am today.

I have not done anything eulogistic about these two persons but they are part of my life. One is an Indian national who came to Guyana, married a Guyanese woman and took Guyanese citizenship. He owned a school on Thomas Street, Guyana Oriental College, opposite the Georgetown Hospital. His name was Shruti Kant.

I must and will acknowledge what Shruti did for me. His kids live in Canada and would be in their fifties now. If any Guyanese in Canada knows them, please ask them to get in touch with me. My email is fredkissoon@yahoo.com. The other is Fred Philips, the general manager for the Georgetown Club in the 1960s and early 1970s. He left no one, so there are no relatives alive for him.

I plan to write about these two men that I have not been able to pay back because they are no longer with us. The longer I live, the more I am convinced that great people need to be remembered for the contribution they made to the country they lived in. I have done several articles on this topic before. Once more, I am returning to it and in the future, I will write on things that I have written on before about the need to remember people and places so Guyanese can know their history.

The fantastic, Yesu Persaud who was responsible for the Indian Monument Garden on Church Street, opposite St. Roses School, once promised to accede to a request I made to him. Yesu was one of the busiest businessmen in the world so I guess he forgot and I forgot to remind him.

I told Yesu that right where the garden sits was the original GWI. That was where Georgetown got its water supply. So I asked him, if he can erect a sign with that history. When the school children from St. Roses look up, they will know that right across from their school is where their great grandparents and grandparents got their water to drink, cook and clean.

I hope the chairman of the garden committee can still do what Yesu promised me. The City Council should do that but it will cite money problems.
There is a place on the seawall that my daughter loved more than any section when she was growing up. It is a huge bend in the wall as you drive eastward. Mr. Hamilton Green told me that the bend had a name – Adamson’s Bend. It was named after a colonial engineer, Adamson, who was murdered on that same site. Green told me in the 1940s and 1950s, Georgetowners knew it as Adamson’s Bend but now it is forgotten.

I am still at a loss why not a street in Berbice is named after Rohan Kanhai. He remains the definitive stylish test batman that Guyana ever produced in my opinion. I agree with a street being named after Shiv Chanderpaul but why not Kanhai? So there is Clive Lloyd Drive, Lance Gibbs Street and Chanderpaul Drive. What happen to Kanhai? He is moving into his nineties and it would be such an enlightening thing to see when he unveils the street named after him.

Then there is Ron Robinson. More than 50 years in service to theatre and radio in Guyana. There has to be either a scholarship or a roadway bearing the name of Ron. There isn’t anything that bears Janet Jagan’s and Desmond Hoyte’s name. Mrs. Jagan used journalism at the Mirror newspaper to educate a generation of Guyanese in the politics of anti-dictatorship liberation.

Both Mrs. Jagan and Mr. Hoyte will have their detractors but if you bother with what the detractors say, you will never honour any politician whatsoever. Mr. Hoyte lived on North Road even when he was president. North Road and South Road have no historical significance. Both roads should be renamed, the north, after Hoyte. There should be a prestigious Master scholarship in journalism that bears Mrs. Jagan’s name.

Finally, I want to end by agreeing with the decision by President Burnham to change Murray Street to Quamina Street. Murray was a hangman from slavery days. Quamina was a revolutionary hero. I don’t normally agree with Mr. Burnham but I most certainly do on this one.