Erica Williams-Connell talks about her father, the late Eric Williams, with a warm and lively affection. She talks about him as if the memories are still very vivid. She sounds as if he were her best friend.

Erica is standing in a room upstairs of the UWI library surrounded by the memorabilia of her father's life and career. Kamaluddin Mohammed who served from 1956 with her father is about to leave. He has just delivered more books, more papers.

Ever the politician, he seizes the moment, gives a characteristic greeting to photographer Kenroy Ambris and myself "Neighbour, I ent keep allyuh back," he calls out loudly and gets into a busy round of hand shaking.

At one end of the room artist Ken Crichlow (he is directing the Creative Arts Centre in constructing a wing of the museum) is examining a book illustrated with creatures from wild fantasy. The pictures are faded, the pages are brown with age, the print a gothic type - the book is titled Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner, and it is one of several such in the collection. The inscription inside bears testimony to the fact that it was given to Eric Williams as a book prize when he was a fourth Form student at QRC.

What kind of man was he? I ask her. She is holding one of his jackets, a dark blue navy, with three pens still tucked into the top front pocket. The jacket is very small and a bit round-shouldered. She rubs a sleeve reflectively as she replies.

"He was an intensely private man. That's why he always wore his dark glasses."

He also "hated" to be ill and she described what happened once when he was not well. He was nervous of doctors.

"I remember once he had diverticulitis and he refused to go to hospital, but he needed a blood transfusion. He needed to get drips and so while he was in the bathroom we sneaked in a hospital bed and I also had to sneak in two nurses, one of whom was the sister of a friend of mince. Anyway we had a tough time getting the IV (intravenous drip) in and there I am sitting on the bed, I was holding his head and I had my hand on the side of his face so he wouldn't see where the needle had to go in. I was the one trying to be strong patting him and making jokes and the next thing I know is, I faint. Anyway I am told he shouted Halsey [McShine who was his doctor and was also at school with him], get this blasted thing out of my hand and get some brandy for Erica."

I ask her about his reputation for great sarcasm.

"I don't know that he was. What he had was a fabulous sense of humour. Allyson Hennessy once did an interview in which she showed the private man and he made what I consider to be the understatement of the millennium. He told her he was not a great morning person. And he would say, 'If you are alive when you get to the office then the office will surely kill you.'"

He didn't rise particularly early, "about 7.30 a.m." she remembers, and have cereal and coffee. But he would wake up "sour too bad" she recalled.

But his life might have taken a completely different direction, she says, had her mother Eveline Suilan Williams (nee Moyou) lived. She died when Erica was only two years old and while she does not remember her she says her death had a profound effect on his life.

"That piano [a music box sized piano], with the love letter inserted was a gift from him to my mother.

The note reads:

Lover girl,

A souvenir of Whitsuntide, 1953, and an anticipation of all that lies ahead.

With all my love,

Eric

He gave it to her in 1953 and she died unexpectedly three weeks later. He had been planning to take all of us on a sabbatical to Europe for six months, and when she died, he decided he would still go. But he collapsed while he was there. And I think it is because he kept so calm, he didn’t want to show his emotions. Generally he was a man who had difficulty showing his feelings but not with her. In one of his love letters to her he says she made him lose his fear of dependency."

Erica was 30 years old when her father died, now she is 47 and in preparing the material she admits "it has been difficult to go through all these things after 17 years."

She sounds almost regretful of the years he spent in politics. "There was so much promise. He could have had such a fulfilled life - after my mother died that had the profoundest effect on him - he always said if your mother had lived I would not have gone into politics - she did not want him to."

Now the Eric Williams Memorial Collection (EWMC) at UWI is completed she admits. "I feel numb. Totally, hopelessly and completely numb. This is the first project I have planned. There are 35 others."

I ask her about her own life and she shrugs almost dismissively.

"Who me? I'm just an administrative secretary (part time) at the dermatology foundation of Miami. It's not particularly challenging. This (the collection) is challenging."

The collection, the work ahead and looking after her 11-year-old daughter Eric, to whom she is a full time mother - these, she says, are the important things now in her life.

The Eric Williams Memorial Collection will be launched officially today 3.30 p.m. at the Library, UWI, St Augustine.

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