If the state is looking for a nation worthy of honor in this 60th year of Independence, it should consider Mr. Samuel “Boy” Walrond.
If ever there was a pure Trinity who represented all that was good and possible in us, it was this gifted man.
And if the state is thinking of commissioning sculptures and busts of the country’s iconic figures to replace the colonial monuments that offend so many, we suggest Walrond too.
He made hundreds, including one of his own, during a life that ended at age 95.
“Uncle’s son” died at the age of eight and time is running out.
Not long ago, iron vandals found his uninhabited house/workshop/studio in Strikers (New) Village, Point Fortin and celebrated.
They removed all the metal they could find, broke into the house and ransacked the place.
The items you see in the museum were left broken and scattered across the floor.
But many of Walrond’s creations are still salvaged, waiting for politicians to follow through on an unfulfilled promise.
Is it worth saving?
We spoke to Walrond a few months before his death in 2014, at that home.
His body, which had defied the passage of time, is slowly failing, but his spirit shone like a contented child.
While there, he showed us his work, explained technique, gave insightful life advice, exposed the prejudices of Port of Spain, said a prayer, and recited the Shakespeare he had learned in elementary school while touring his home and picking up, collecting or petting his most beloved creations.
It was only a long, long way into our conversation with Walrond that he mentioned that he was blind and lived alone.
But as the neighbors pointed out, this man, considered the treasure of the village, was extremely independent and extremely intelligent.
He had a mental map of the house and could find every tool, light switch and food.
His life in darkness was the reason time stopped inside the house.
Nothing seemed to have been updated or moved since the 1980s when his eyesight began to fail.
starting
Of his ability, Walrond told us: “I’ve had no formal training. I feel like a fairy hit me with this one. All my life, I have been making my own creations. I can’t be quiet. Something always explodes in me. Something volcanic. Do this, do that. If I don’t do something for today, I feel like I’m doing nothing. It’s in me. A man could be rich, but without a sense of purpose, he would always be small,” he said.
Walrond said he began making figurines at the age of ten in his hometown of Ste Madeleine, at a time when his parents and grandparents were farmers living near what is now the abandoned Usine Ste Madeleine sugar factory.
He made Christian saints, in between running along railroad tracks wearing his father’s old shirts, tending to the family’s donkeys, sheep, and goats, at a time when a pair of alpacas (shoes) cost 36 cents and you were rich if you wore shoes to school.
He settled in Point Fortin to pursue oil, working for the United British Oilfields of Trinidad (UBOT), then Shell as a machinist, moving from one facility to another until his retirement at the age of 64. But the sculpture was more important than anything else. as many artists would understand.
Technique
Walrond was primarily a sculptor and his medium, concrete in wire forms, worked with hand-made tools. He also did metalwork and built electrical gizmos to bring to life objects that have impressed all who have seen them.
So vast was his collection of work, from life-size to miniature, that it spilled into the front yard, the ground floor, the living room, the porch, the bedroom, the dining room, and the kitchen.
The wooden floor and walls, unmaintained for decades, seemed unable to support the weight of the objects. But they have it because Walrond built it too.
Walrond’s work traced important events, domestic and international.
He had made busts or statues of American actor Sydney Poitier, United States presidents John F Kennedy and Ronald Reagan, and boxer Mike Tyson when they were in their prime.
He has as his companions parang queen Daisy Voisin, Sir Solomon Hochoy, Hasely Crawford, Gary Sobers, Papa Bois and Mama Dlo of folklore, and the murtis of Lord Ram, Mother Lakshmi, Sita and Rawan.
The statues share space with baton warriors Dr Eric Williams and a headless figure of the hero of the Baptist faith, the late Archbishop Elton Griffith.
They are all overlooked by a soucouyant and guarded by mating dogs, and by monkeys and chickens.
Preserving his legacy
“Now, gentlemen. I want to show you this,” he said and pointed to dozens of miniatures on a table on the porch.
The figures trace the history of the pan, from bamboo with tambu in the 30s to where it is today (it had a scene where the Pope was listening to the pan).
“So you are welcome, my dear gentlemen, to my art haven,” said Walrond, before effortlessly giving a history of who we were; our carnivals; lost culture; showing the characters once played by masqueraders; the donkey in the lion’s skin, or Rastafari racehorse, the first West Indian-bred horse to win the Governors’ Cup, in 1940.
Then Walrond complained.
He said many works of local art were being preserved in Port of Spain, but not his.
He said those works were being placed on pedestals and walls in the capital. But people had forgotten that he made the panman statues at the intersection of Coffee and Cipero Streets, San Fernando, Marcus Garvey on Harris Promenade or Butlers in Fyzabad.
The politicians had sent many people to his house to catalog and ask. More came from the University of the West Indies (UWI), art instructors and students all in awe of his work.
“But it stopped, and like a weird umbrella (mushroom), it got attached and died there,” he said.
In the dining room is Dwight Yorke, in his Soca Warriors uniform from the 2006 World Cup finals.
“It brings tears to my eyes that it’s still here. Dwight Yorke, that very active fellow; he would be happy to tell his football associates that he has a copy of it, so that when I as an artist am gone, and he is gone, there will be a memory of him and his greatness.
“But I cannot make another brother, African or local black, say: “Look! This should not be hidden. This needs to be exposed.’ Tourism could have had this in Tobago and it would have attracted more people to see it,” Walrond said.
Walrond’s last major project before darkness fell was a bust of himself and Barack Obama.
And in his final days, he made fish-shaped wall tiles “because I have to keep working. I can’t stop it.”
One of Walrond’s children, son Rex Bobb, is responsible for what is left behind.
Bobb, a Petrotrin firefighter (who along with his late brother Renroy Bobb inherited some of his father’s talent), has cataloged the items left behind in the house.
It was a home Bobb (now 67), his siblings and mother lived in until he was ten when his parents separated and his father went into work.
Bobb said, “My father saw art in everything, in every scrap of metal. And he didn’t take anything away. There were things I found that I never knew he had done. He has a bead curtain made from seeds he found in the backyard. Containers for storing flour, salt and sugar for the kitchen, made so well you’d think they were from a store.
“He was also a tailor, so he had clothes stored away that he never wore, and bolts of clothes stuffed everywhere. The light bulbs we used growing up, he made from milk cans. He did his work with tools he made himself. And every piece had a story. Some of his sculptures and busts he would lend to exhibit. Sometimes they came back broken.”
Caribbean Man
Among Walrond’s best works was “Caribbean Man”, a large head on a small body, containing motors and gears (mostly scavenged from a bicycle) that allowed the eyes to light up and the figure to move.
The body represented the small size of the Caribbean territories, the head symbolized that we were big thinkers with much to give to the world, Walrond told his son.
Bobb said his father was able to sell some of his work. There was an exhibition in 1997 at the Long Circular Mall in St James. But sculptures and busts would often be commissioned, then forgotten.
And there’s also a letter Walrond kept from the San Fernando City Council in 1974, telling him that while they were happy to display his amazing work, they didn’t have the money to buy anything.
One to the Siparia Regional Corporation in 1973, where he noted his sculptures of TUB Butler, George Weeks, George Lamming (famous Barbadian writer) and Sir Frank Worrell, which, Walrond suggested, would look great on a pedestal in the area.
And correspondence from many years ago, when he pleaded with Point Fort politicians to help him develop a museum on the site.
Rex Bobb would laugh when friends asked him why he didn’t follow in his father’s footsteps.
“I saw my father’s struggles. Misery after misery. Why would I put myself through it? As a child, he took me with him (to exhibitions). All he would get from them was a favor and a pat on the back. Thank you was all. People would borrow his things, break them, then send them back and tell him to come get them.
“My father may not have died a sad man. He enjoyed what he was doing. But he died disappointed and frustrated. I heard him say that if he was from Port of Spain, or the color of his skin was different, or if he lived far away, it would be different. Even now I don’t know how much his art is worth. It was so devalued and undervalued during his lifetime. But it would be a tragedy to give away his life’s work now, for nothing,” Bobb said.
The planned museum was not realized
Then Point Fortin Mayor Clyde Paul, who attended the funeral, committed to maintaining the Walrond property and fencing it while a long-term user plan was formulated.
Since then, three more mayors have been appointed.
The planned museum and heritage site is not done yet.
Bobb said he’s done everything he’s asked and it’s worn him out.
He traveled to the US so that his sister, Ruth, could complete the paperwork regarding her share of the property. He has paid for all the legal papers for a release and quitclaim deed, allowing the state to take his father’s property, in a country where the land is like gold and nobody just quits.
He has been trying to find a valuer to put a price on everything his father has done. He had emailed, WhatsApped, called and met with Point Fortin Borough administrators to move the plan forward, with limited success.
“I let them know that it has been going on for eight years and nothing has improved. Everything seems to be getting worse. It would be a noble and fitting thing to remember him in this way, this Southern man who achieved all this, from nothing.”
But the bureaucracy, Bobb said, “is exhausting. And disappointing. I’ve lost this spark doing this for my old man. But I haven’t given up. It would be a wonderful thing if it happened.”
Richard Charan History Project
Note: Richard Charan can be reached at [email protected]
