Ian Allen/Staff Photographer

"The very best years of my life," Randy Finnikin states, "was from birth to six years because of the affection of my father."

Finnikin was born to Dudley and Leonie Finnjikin 35 years ago in Dry Hill, Lucea, Hanover. When Dudley Finniken died when Randy was six years old, leaving three sons without a father, it was a catas-trophic event.

The man's death, Randy says, "had a tremendous effect. To this day, I do not think that the family has fully recovered."

When, today, he looks at his own sons Christov, aged nine, and five-year-old Jordan, he remembers his own experience with his dad.

"I can remember very vividly the birthday parties. I remember him coming home from work. As he came around the corner, he would provoke the lady next door, shouting 'pretty dress'! We laughed. I remember him buying a tricycle for me and taking me to his cattle farm. All of those special times have preserved me."

In later years, at high school, when Randy was punched once too often by the school bully, he would

shout, ''If my father was alive you would never get away with this!"

Randy's grandfather stepped in to take care of his three grandsons, providing clothes and other basics, but it was still a struggle to get lunch money every day.

The boys walked three and half miles to and from school, often without eating lunch. "I remember once I took up a cane joint, already chewed and re-chewed it to get the last of the juice out of it," Randy remembers.

Randy admitted that he could have, just as well, walked into the local canefields in Hanover and filled his stomach with sugarcane, but it was innate, he recalls to avoid stealing and any other action that was wrong.

In time, Randy passed his Common Entrance Examinations and left Lucea Primary School for Jose Marti High in St. Catherine where the work study programme prepared him for the world of work in a way that few other schools were doing at the time.

Randy admits, "I had dreams of going to another high school where we were not expected to clean the dorm. But the work ethic formed in me at this time was good."

By fourth form, he realised that most of Jose Marti's graduates were accepted in the outside world in positions of leadership especially in the church, the military. Randy had also become a Christian at age 12.

When at age 15 his grandfather died, he experienced another traumatic episode.

"My world was falling apart. In my eyes there was no hope. I did not see anyone else who would help my mother with three boys."

He was walking on the driveway, in between the football field and the fish pod at Jose Marti when a voice spoke to him: "Randy - you are going to make it - you and I."

Was it God, or was it his father?

Randy believes it was his heavenly father and he claims that the statement would remain his foundation for the rest of his life.

In fifth form, Randy was head boy which really meant that he was responsible for 560 students, overseeing the preparation of their breakfast and lunch and serving them, run detention, supervise cleaning.

"It prepared us for the real world," the student who also did agriculture and construction said.

On graduation, he decided to go back home to Lucea and seek a job, but he was not to remain there long as Jose Marti called to place him as a farm manager in Troy, Upper Trelawny.

Finnikin accepted and went off to manage 50 acres of coffee, citrus and plantain and supervise 90 persons, many of whom could have been his parents and grandparents.

He was not paid well, but he had free accommodation and no utility costs. The experience, he recalled, was good one until the boss started to ask him to spy on the workers. He declined and went to stay with relatives in upper Trelawey until Pastor Franklyn King, a mentor from Jose Marti sent him to the managers of Sunbeam Boys Home who needed a superintendent for the home.

Randy Finnikin was only 18 years old, but his track record of managing 560 boys at Jose Marti and then 90 workers at the coffee farm was enough of a reference.

He was taken to Sunbeam by night and rose up the next morning, dressed in a military jacket to ensure his first impression was a lasting one.

Sunbeam where he was to stay until age 25, Finnikin says, was a wonderful experience. Although there were many challenges including the sale of the home by a bank to whom its owners were indebted, he worked along with the Reverend Cedric Lue of the Open Bible church to rebuild the home in Spring Village Gardens near Old Harbour.

From their new home, situated on just over four acres of land, the 20 male residents went to school and looked after goats, chickens and grew vegetables.

But, after seven years Randy believed it was time to move on. Although he has retained an active interest in the home's affairs, (he is now Board Chairman) he made a switch to Cornerstone Ministries.

Earlier, he had registered with this ministry as a trainee in construction skills, but before long was taking some of the classes himself.

He also registered in Bible College at the Jamaica Open Bible Institute. The plan was to replicate the Cornerstone model of skills training at Sunbeam, but this was not to be.

Instead, he was recruited to work at Cornerstone and, in the 90s was placed in charge of the extremely successful reform and training programme in the Jamaica prison system.

From the Brick Yard (General Penitentiary) on South Camp Road????????????? Randy ran a construction and farm unit that grabbed national attention repeatedly.

Cornerstone Ministries in the prisons was a success story from the start, although there was no precedent. Apart from some Jamal programmes which aimed at making people who fell out of the education system literate, there were previously no classrooms, no workshops no job training facilities.

Cornerstone established a massive rehabilitation programme, starting at the then Gun Court prison in 1993. In addition to skills training, the programme also included a half way house for inmates and job placement. Nearing the end of the programme Cornerstone and its prison crew were turning out 20,000 pounds of chicken meat each day, supplying many institutions in Kingston. They were turning out skilled construction workers as well.

Randy Finnikin was also involved in Cornerstones' street boy programme out of which several male leaders have emerged.

Finnikin has also been working in Spring Village where residents faced a crisis after a massive redundancy at Jamaica Broilers in recent years. In this area, he has been working on providing skills training and support programmes for sport and life skills development.

In June 2006, Randy Finnikin resigned form Cornerstone Ministries, feeling, he said, that another phase of his life was about to begin.

He has continued his work with Spring Village and is considering replicating the model of community development to other depressed areas in Jamaica.

Now aged 35, he reveals that both his brothers have died in tragic circumstances.

He says, "I must admit that I am still struggling with what all of that means. When I go to Dry Hill and see the three plots - dad and my two brothers, and see that I am the only one left standing I wonder."

But, he still believes he has lived a blessed life.

"I might not have millions to show but in my short life what I have achieved in terms of building up others has been good."

Randy Finnikin has fathered many who are not his biological sons and will continue to do so as long as his own heavenly father sees fit to leave him alive.