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Why name station after T.P. Lecky now?
Published: Saturday | November 19, 2011
Dr Karl Wellington - Photo by Christopher Serju
Thomas Philip 'T.P.' Lecky
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Christopher Serju, Gleaner Writer
BROWN'S TOWN, St Ann:
DR KARL Wellington, a student of the late Thomas Philip 'T.P.' Lecky, is questioning the timing and handling of the decision to rename the Bodles research station in Old Harbour, St Catherine, in memory of the man regarded the world over as Jamaica's greatest livestock geneticist.
"I am disappointed that it was not carried through at the appropriate time. It is probably for ulterior motives that it is being done at this time, maybe for some ulterior motives. Why at this time, when you have had a place named as a centre of excellence years ago and there is nothing excellent going on there? At this time? The time when it should have been done, it wasn't done," commented Wellington.
"Now they are hoping that by just naming it T.P. Lecky Station it will automatically move back into excellence. I hope that it does, but I am very, very sceptical," he told The Gleaner while attending the Minard Livestock Show and Beef Festival held at Minard Estate in Brown's Town, St Ann, last week.
He was responding to a declaration by agriculture minister Robert Montague, who advised that the decision had been communicated to staff at the facility on Tuesday.
17 years after initial proposal
Following Lecky's death in 1994, Wellington, a livestock geneticist, was among a group of scientists who lobbied for the station to be so renamed in Lecky's honour. Seventeen years later, he is still smarting at the way the suggestion was received. While the then agriculture minister, Seymour Mullings, favoured such a move, others felt that because it was a multi-purpose research station, this might overshadow the work of crop scientists and others at Bodles.
"The feedback that we got was that the Ministry of Agriculture came up with the bright idea that it was unfair to name the station the T.P. Lecky Memorial Station. However, if we wished, we could name a barn after T.P. Lecky. I was so vexed about it. I don't even talk about it," Wellington recalled on Thursday.
Wellington's main concern is that the honour so well deserved has been long coming and at a time when Bodles, where Lecky created history, is nowhere near the first-rate facility it was then. As a result, he contends that the association could harm, rather than enhance, Lecky's reputation.
On June 25, 1952, Lecky unveiled to the world the Jamaica Hope, the first cattle breed developed in the Western hemisphere, watched by scientists from all over the world.
Published: Saturday | November 19, 2011
Dr Karl Wellington - Photo by Christopher Serju
Thomas Philip 'T.P.' Lecky
1 2 >
Christopher Serju, Gleaner Writer
BROWN'S TOWN, St Ann:
DR KARL Wellington, a student of the late Thomas Philip 'T.P.' Lecky, is questioning the timing and handling of the decision to rename the Bodles research station in Old Harbour, St Catherine, in memory of the man regarded the world over as Jamaica's greatest livestock geneticist.
"I am disappointed that it was not carried through at the appropriate time. It is probably for ulterior motives that it is being done at this time, maybe for some ulterior motives. Why at this time, when you have had a place named as a centre of excellence years ago and there is nothing excellent going on there? At this time? The time when it should have been done, it wasn't done," commented Wellington.
"Now they are hoping that by just naming it T.P. Lecky Station it will automatically move back into excellence. I hope that it does, but I am very, very sceptical," he told The Gleaner while attending the Minard Livestock Show and Beef Festival held at Minard Estate in Brown's Town, St Ann, last week.
He was responding to a declaration by agriculture minister Robert Montague, who advised that the decision had been communicated to staff at the facility on Tuesday.
17 years after initial proposal
Following Lecky's death in 1994, Wellington, a livestock geneticist, was among a group of scientists who lobbied for the station to be so renamed in Lecky's honour. Seventeen years later, he is still smarting at the way the suggestion was received. While the then agriculture minister, Seymour Mullings, favoured such a move, others felt that because it was a multi-purpose research station, this might overshadow the work of crop scientists and others at Bodles.
"The feedback that we got was that the Ministry of Agriculture came up with the bright idea that it was unfair to name the station the T.P. Lecky Memorial Station. However, if we wished, we could name a barn after T.P. Lecky. I was so vexed about it. I don't even talk about it," Wellington recalled on Thursday.
Wellington's main concern is that the honour so well deserved has been long coming and at a time when Bodles, where Lecky created history, is nowhere near the first-rate facility it was then. As a result, he contends that the association could harm, rather than enhance, Lecky's reputation.
On June 25, 1952, Lecky unveiled to the world the Jamaica Hope, the first cattle breed developed in the Western hemisphere, watched by scientists from all over the world.
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