A celebration of the life of Frank Rojas: A worthy son of our Caribbean celebration

Fri Feb 08, 2013

by DR THE HONOURABLE RALPH E. GONSALVES,

PRIME MINISTER OF ST VINCENT AND THE GRENADINES

Frank Rojas was born at Edinboro in colonial St Vincent in 1922. He died, aged 90 years, on January 18, 2013, in the United States of America, with an abiding love for his homeland, an independent St Vincent and the Grenadines. Over these 90 years, St Vincent and the Grenadines, the Caribbean, the USA, and the entire world have undergone profound socio-cultural, political, governance, and economic alterations, for the better. Frank Rojas was a witness, interpreter, participant, and moulder of many of these changes, especially in the Caribbean and its diaspora in the USA. Frank Rojas has left his imprint as a radio personality, an author of home-grown short stories, a producer of works of the creative imagination (including designs for Carnival masqueraders), a political and labour activist and organiser, a diplomat, an extraordinary communicator, and witty raconteur. Central to his life work was his family: a loving marriage of some 60 years to Marie Gellizeau, who pre-deceased him in 2005; a son Don, two daughters, Erica and Coleen; daughter-in-law and sons-in-laws; grandchildren; and an extended network of familial relations.

Frank Rojas was a Vincentian patriot, a Caribbean nationalist, anti-colonialist and anti-imperialist to the core, a cultural warrior for the dignity and authenticity of subject peoples, a social democrat, and a fighter for the poor and disadvantaged. He was thoroughly grounded in the tried and tested values of our Caribbean, while embracing the universal values of humanism, tolerance, and ‘love of neighbour’.

I did not know of Frank Rojas until my attendance at the St Vincent Boys’ Grammar School (1959-1965). I grew up in a rural village to which radio had not come until 1959. By then, of course, Frank’s name and presence were on the Windward Islands Broadcasting Service (WIBS), headquartered in Grenada, but with substations in St. Lucia, Dominica, and St Vincent and the Grenadines.

Frank’s Caribbeanness was a lived experience: a Vincentian-born of Trinidadian parents who grew up in both St Vincent and the Grenadines and Trinidad; public servant and radio journalist in St Vincent and the Grenadines, Grenada, St Lucia and Dominica; a political activist in the working people’s struggles in St Vincent and the Grenadines and Grenada led respectively by the charismatic figures of Ebenezer Theodore Joshua and Eric Matthew Gairy; labour activism in New York in the 1970s and 1980s, especially among Caribbean workers; a brief stint as Grenada’s Ambassador to the United Nations; and a co-founder with his son Don in 1973 of the first Caribbean-American newspaper (‘Caribbean Daily’) and the internet-based newspaper ‘The Black World Today’ in 1996.

During my Grammar School years, especially during the almost four years (1962-1965) that I lived in Lower Middle Street and its vicinity, I learnt more about Frank Rojas. As a teenager who admired Ebenezer Joshua, I oft-times saw Rojas with him about town and country. I got to know more about Frank Rojas from his son Don, especially during the years of the Grenada Revolution when Don and I were close to the Revolution’s leader, Maurice Bishop. Slowly I came to admire this outstanding Caribbean man of many talents, integrity, and commitment to the further ennoblement of our Caribbean civilisation and its Vincentian component.

There is a piece of required reading on Frank Rojas penned by Professor Roy Austin of St Vincent and the Grenadines, and the USA — Roy was President George W. Bush’s Ambassador to Trinidad and Tobago for eight years. Roy’s article was published in The Searchlight newspaper of St Vincent and the Grenadines (June 26, 1998), entitled Frank Rojas: Cultural Contributions of a Mas’ Man. It traced Frank’s role in designing and playing mas; his leadership of “The Shipboys’ based in Tyrell Street; his managership of the Mellotone Orchestra, which included the iconic ‘Shake’ Keane on trumpet, the Mc Intosh Brothers (Danny and Arthur) on saxophone, Sammy Joshua on guitar, and ‘Bricks’ Wilson on drums; his effort to base the Carnival celebration in the Court Yard, prior to its establishment at Victoria Park, but after the British colonial Administrator had ordered that the Botanic Gardens were off-limits; his authorship of stories for radio, including “Akita the Slave”, “Row in the River”, “Old Time Stories” and “Life with Lions” — the latter with Robert Connell; and his position as Deputy Commissioner for Culture in New York under Major Beam.

It is quite likely that had Ebenezer Joshua’s People’s Political Party (PPP) won the 1967 general elections, and had ushered the country into internal self-government in 1969, rather than Robert Milton Cato’s St Vincent and the Grenadines Labour Party, Frank Rojas would have been our country’s first native Governor. As it was, the Labour Party won and Frank Rojas left the public service. He migrated to the USA in 1968, to start life anew at the age of 46 years.

I feel honoured to write this appreciation of Frank Rojas, a wonderful human being. It is perhaps ironic, even the closing of a circle, that I, the successor to Robert Milton Cato’s leadership in the party and government, am writing this praise to Frank Rojas. Times have certainly changed; there is much water under the bridge. I hope that in celebrating Frank Rojas, I, a child too, of our Caribbean civilisation, embody Joshua, Cato, Rojas (father and son), and our region’s people amidst all our possibilities and limitations, strengths and weaknesses.

Frank Rojas’ life and work ought not only to inspire, but to draw out of us that which is good and noble, and even to draw out goodness and nobility which we do not as yet know that we possess.

On behalf of the Government and people of St Vincent and the Grenadines, on behalf of the Caribbean nation, and on my own behalf, I salute our dear friend, comrade, and elder Frank Rojas. I offer sincerest condolences to his family and friends. He undoubtedly played a splendid innings. May he rest in peace!