7th December 2002
This morning it is my honour and privilege to be able to speak at the funeral of my friend Tyrone Fitzgerald who well all know as Dr. Offff but who I more often than not called Tyrone or Rooney.
It all seems a very very long time ago and I think that it is a long time ago that we first met. I certainly can’t remember the first time but I have a set of memories about the past that together cause me to call him a friend. I know it was when we were young, and we were all in one organization or another trying to establish our identities as adults, and seeking to build our community and our country.
So much has changed since then. Some people have moved from the Valley. We have all gone our separate ways. But it is clear, if it was not clear ‘til now, that we are all gathered around a collective memory of a small community known as the Valley in New Providence, and which I have come fondly to describe as that community within the sound of the bells of St. Georges. And there is no doubt that the people from that community have left their mark on The Bahamas.
I think the first person that I heard call him Offfff was Brenville Hanna, whom we all call Bulla. And then one day that was transformed into a group that appeared on stage called Dr. Offff. They had a session at Compass Point and the song ‘Get Involved’ was born. And Tyrone, who had had a major hit when he co-authored Funky Nassau, thought that he had found the formula to make it into the pantheon of the big time.
The big time for many of us means commercial success in the United States. Tyrone did not know it then but he had instead contributed to something more profound. He had established the nomenclature for the music of The Bahamas. He called it Junkanoo Music.
That anyone should be surprised at any of this is a surprise to any of us who knew him from those days when there was the Centreville Community Development Association and the Centreville Youth group or who worked with him on Centreville in October. Tyrone had a thousand ideas coming. He was a creator, an inventor.
But my most enduring memory of Dr. Offff is this. Dr. David Allen, the psychiatrist, used to hold a weekly forum for public discussion at the Convent in West Hill Street. And I had not seen him for years. One day Tyrone appeared in response to an invitation to the Forum. And he came and he brought all his boys with him. I remember Robert Johnson was there. It was a joyous reunion for all of us. Tyrone was a panelist, and I was amazed when he sat on the panel.
And the story goes something like this. There was Dr. John Lunn there, there was Dr. David Allen there, there was Dr. Alvin Poussaint of Harvard there together with Dr. Poussaint's wife who was also a doctor. And the panel was complete when Dr. Offff joined the panel.
So there was the panel: Dr. Lunn, Dr. Allen, Dr. Poussaint and Dr. Offff.
And the discussion was about Junkanoo and the role it played in The Bahamas, and the Doctors waited on his every word. Dr. Poussaint asked the question: Dr. Offfff how would you describe Junkanoo? And they waited on every word for his reply. You see, he said, “Junkanoo is Junkanoo”. And then he stopped. There was a stunned silence again.
The other doctors began to interpret. So what you are saying Dr. Offff is that Junkanoo really an important phenomenon in The Bahamas that it is a part of the very fabric of the Bahamian society? Dr. Offff paused again and replied: “Junkanoo is Junkanoo.”
I remember it to this day.
I remember how much he cared for his community and that really came through when he and Roosevelt Finlayson planned and executed Centreville in October, a celebration of the Valley that took place in October of every year. And that was only one of his many cultural ideas. In many respects, he was a man of his times and also a man before his time. He was a man of a thousand ideas.
Of course there was his family, both the Fitzgeralds and the Rahmings. Linda and I were good friends, and that soon extended to their children. I had the good fortune of lecturing at the College of The Bahamas, the Government and Politics class of the spring of 1988, and Tyrone Junior was a student in that class. And for his father that was a point of pride, and he always talked to me about his love for his son and what he hoped the young Tyrone would do. I think that one of the most gratifying things of his whole life was his great pride in Tyrone Junior, the successes of his children generally. And from Tyrone Junior’s part, it was an important moment to hear his father tell him face to face how much he loved him and was proud of him.
Fast forward to recent weeks. Our ties were such that when the end was near Linda called to say that I had better go by. That night the Prime Minister, the Minister of Trade and Industry Leslie Miller and myself went to the house. And I saw the struggle. But he had his humour and he had not lost his courage. He said to us that we must not cry for him. He was ready to go. He knew where he was going, and that was all that mattered. He was simply happy to see us. And that is how I left him.
I am sure that in heaven they are singing those immortal words: Don’t be no fool, stay in school/ Let your mind become a tool. Get involved.
William Butler Yeats wrote these words... Changed utterly, a terrible beauty is born. One cannot help but hark back to the biblical words: we shall all be changed. Changed utterly indeed, transformed utterly says Yeats. A terrible beauty is born. To me that is how we mark this passing, a terrible beauty is born.
And so at 53, we say an all too early farewell. But farewell, not goodbye and in the expectation that we shall meet again. When they told me he had died, I thought immediately of that last night, and I realized that the bank of my experiences with Tyrone; Rooney, Doctor Offfff were at an end, and I remembered these Shakespearean words: What a piece of work is man, how noble in reason, how infinite in faculties, in form how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god; the beauty of the world, the paragon of animals; and yet to me, what is this quintessence of dust?