ROY AUGUSTUS

CHALK AND CHEESE

ROY AUGUSTUS SWITCHES CAREERS

AFTER 40 YEARS OF TEACHING

By Terry Joseph

Sunday Express

June 11, 2000

Page 6

Come September 1, Rosary Boys RC School Principal Roy Augustus will retire from the teaching profession after some 40 years of service and make an acute career switch to become a business manager.

Augustus will assume an executive level position in Jack Warner's sports-oriented business empire, a not entirely new thrust, when you consider his parallel experience in the management of political, sporting and cultural organisations.

Nor is his relationship with Warner new at any of those levels. It was Warner who, in 1982, acted as campaign manager to catapult Augustus to his first major political post: the chairmanship of the Organisation for National Reconstruction (ONR). At the time, they were both teachers, Warner at the Polytechnic Institute and Augustus with Success RC School.

Augustus, 57, originally from St Paul Street in the East Dry River Area, began his career as a teacher on December 1, 1960, at the Talparo RC School. Ironically, mere days before he announced his retirement to the Rosary staff, he was invited by that school's current principal to deliver the feature address at its impending graduation ceremony.

Speaking to the Sunday Express, Augustus said: "There were many precious moments over these past 40 years. But among my most pleasant memories is a simple event that occurred the first day that I walked into Bethlehem Boys as principal. One of the senior teachers greeted me with the original admission register of 1948, pointing out my name on the students' roll. Of course, there were disappointments too, some of them quite unpleasant, but none unbearable enough to warrant remembering."

Nor was he just an upwardly mobile teacher. Augustus was active in the Roman Catholic Teachers Association to the point of becoming vice-president and was one of the five-member group that gave birth to the Trinidad and Tobago Unified Teachers Association (TTUTA).

All the while, he served at various levels on the management committee of the St Paul Street Community Council and Youth Centre, staying in touch with both his roots and family, by going to have lunch at his mother's home on a daily basis. It was a practice he continued up until the time of her death in 1993.

He was an executive member of the National Association of Trinidad and Tobago Steelbands (NATTS), under the presidency of the late George Goddard. "We had a lot of arguments, mainly over his management style," Augustus said. "He tended to be less than democratic on occasion and that approach riled the membership." Those fundamental differences frustrated that relationship but it was good preparation for Augustus who in 1998 was appointed chairman of the National Carnival Commission.

He has been no less active in national politics, and even regional politics. He was a stout supporter of the People's National Movement (PNM) in the sixties, from the Youth League level to the point of being a member of Wilton Hinds' campaign management team in 1976. Shortly thereafter, he broke off his relationship with that party.

"My disillusionment with the PNM heightened when I became convinced that the party did not care enough about eh people in the East Dry River and Laventille areas, who comprised its backbone," Augustus said.

"But it was in 1981, during the formation of TTUTA, that I became attracted to what the ONR was saying and when my friend, teacher and colleague, Clive Pantin became involved, I told him I would like to help. The very next night, I was on an ONR platform in Besson Street."

He soon became chairman of the Port of Spain constituency, then chairman of the party until 1985, when he resigned over an issue involving the debate about Indian Arrival day, in which he and certain other executive members took issue with statements made by the party's deputy political leader Suruj Rambachan.

"He was putting us all in a racist light," Augustus said "and the party was expressly against that kind of thing. We took the issue to the leadership council and were routed in a battle of words at the Astor Cinema, so the honourable thing was to resign," he said.

Augustus was however appointed to the team that negotiated with the other Opposition parties to bring about the National Alliance for Reconstruction (NAR), which swept the polls in 1986.

He remains politically active and is currently part of the strategy team of he United National Congress (UNC), led by Prime Minister Basdeo Panday. He was however quick to point out that tenure in his new job is not dependent on the outcome of this year's general elections.

"However, I will be using all of my spare time, freedom and energy to ensure that the UNC is returned to power for the next five years," he said.

Not that it appears to be anywhere near over, but Augustus has lived a full life. First married in 1972, Candice, his only child from that union, is now married and has given him a grandchild. His current marriage to Lena, brought him three step-children, all of whom are now adult.

For Rosary Boys RC, he would like to see a continuance of the success he met when he joined in 1993 and improvements where possible.

"It is a school loaded with tradition and history," he said. "Rosary will always have to contend with secondary schools stealing its best teachers, but the school has never failed to cultivate new teaching talent and nurture it to the level that delivers the results for which the Rosary Boys RC is famous.

"Among the projects mounted under my stewardship, the one of which I am most proud is the arranging of monthly visits to L'Hospice by different classes, to bring cheer to the inmates there. It has grown to the point that if there are birthdays among the elderly housed there; the boys come up with gifts. It is our way of reminding them that these people have served and the benefits that the very boys now enjoy, have been due to the efforts of the elderly," he said.

"I would not just wish, but pray that the school maintains the standard we have come to know, not just in academic terms, but also in the discipline we have instilled, ensuring that students do the right thing at every opportunity. I would want the school to continue to produce the type of pupil who knows that whatever he is learning is not just for his own benefit, but also for the benefit of the society in which he lives.

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