Anthony Lara laying a wreath at the Gibraltar monument at the University of the West Indies, Mona Campus - Contributed

Suzanne Francis Brown, Contributor

At the corner of Gibraltar Camp Way and Gibraltar Hall Road, close to the University of the West Indies (UWI) 'Post Office Gate', an elegant monument was erected in February this year, out of Gibraltar limestone and Black Africa marble.

It celebrates the memory of nearly 2,000 people who lived in Jamaica, at Gibraltar Camp, during the Second World War; and especially names those who died there and were left behind when the Gibraltarians returned to their fortress country in 1944.

The story of Gibraltar Camp - which housed children, women and men past the age of active service to the military authorities in Gibraltar, as well as several hundred, mainly Jewish, European refugees from the war - is worth recalling.

Also worth telling is the story of how the monument came to be erected 63 years after the Gibraltarians sailed home, leaving much of Gibraltar Camp silent and empty, until the nascent University College of the West Indies took over the camp and its environs from its military caretakers in 1948.

The name 'Lara' provides the link. In March 2005, Gibraltarian Naval Engineer Anthony Lara came to Jamaica for the first time. His mission was one he inherited from his father - to find the grave of his grandmother, Elizabeth Epsworth Lara, who died and was buried in Jamaica two weeks before the mass of Gibraltarians returned home. News of her death reached her son when the ship reached Gibraltar.

He had stayed in Gibraltar along with other males aged 18-40, and was on the dock to welcome his mother and other family members home. Her grandson says that her son, his father, never quite recovered from that news.

Anthony Lara's mission was frustrating but ultimately successful. He made his way to the UWI's Public Relations Department, where PR Manager Carroll Edwards put him in touch with me. I had researched the history of the Mona campus site and written a book, Mona: Past and Present, for the UWI History Department. But his query raised a puzzle to which I had no complete answer.

The Gibraltarians who died while in Jamaica were not buried at the camp. Most, being Catholic, were buried at the Calvary Cemetery in Kingston. This was confirmed at the Catholic Chancery, where archivist Fr. Gerald McLaughlin made available a copy of the Calvary burial record. Some, being Jewish, were interred in the city's Jewish cemetery. Were others in the public May Pen Cemetery? The KSAC was unable to confirm. Nor were there records, going so far back, at the Anglican Diocese, which was queried because Elizabeth Lara was Anglican. There was a list of the Gibraltarians in the camp, at the Jamaica Government Archives in Spanish Town; but not of where the dead were buried.

Eventually, it came down to a reasoning that the St. Andrew Parish Church graveyard would have been the main burial spot for Anglicans at the time. Lara, his Jamaican driver Clinton Bailey, and others recruited at the church, began a search of the graveyard. And a graveyard regular found the grave. Only a small part of the slab, and the original headstone remained. Lara was able to have the grave re-tombed, thus fulfilling his mission.

Mission complete

But prior to finding the grave, frustration had led him to have a plaque made in the memory of his grandmother, several other family members, and the mother of a friend, Oscar Alvarez, all of whom also died and were buried in Jamaica. He and Bailey posted the plaque on the side of the UWI Old Library, one of the few Gibraltar Camp buildings remaining on the Mona Campus; and laid flowers beneath it. The Old Library was originally Gibraltar Camp's Sacred Heart Church. While the original plaque could not remain in that position, it later proved possible to have it permanently placed on the wall of the building, with permission of the UWI Grounds and Buildings Committee.

Lara's original mission was complete. But he was deeply dissatisfied with the situation relating to the other Gibraltarian graves, many of them seeming to have disappeared in the overgrown and insecure Calvary Cemetery, which he and Bailey also visited in March 2005. He was disturbed that no effort had been made to look after the graves of the more than 65 Gibraltarians who died while in care of the British government, in the then colony of Jamaica. During a discussion prior to his return to Gibraltar, he raised the possibility of a monument, at the former camp site, in the shape of the Rock of Gibraltar.

Work being undertaken

I was able to advise him of work being undertaken by the UWI's ad hoc Heritage Markers Committee, plans for which included signs to mark material structures such as the Aqueduct, and a series of obelisks - designed based on an existing structure outside the university's Geography and Geology Department - to recall significant populations who had lived on the site across recorded time.

He was enthusiastic to assist. He was willing to work with the obelisk design, and interested in my own dream of a monument made from the very Rock of Gibraltar which undergirded the homeland of the majority of the people of Gibraltar Camp.

Agreement

The Heritage Markers Committee agreed with the concept and with pursuing this collaboration. Committee Chair Professor Patrick Bryan wrote a letter of agreement based on a letter of commitment from Lara. Lara also approached the government of this British colony, of some 30,000 people; however, the bulk of the effort was his. He had Gibraltar limestone quarried and shipped it to Spain for polishing. Meanwhile, the slabs to clad the four sides of the monument were designed.

Research in Jamaica provided him with the names of those who died, as recorded in the old Sacred Heart Church diary, and in the Calvary Cemetery records. In Gibraltar, he double checked this information. Draft text for the description of the camp and its residents went back and forth by e-mail, as did photographs of progress. Based on the local design of the obelisks, drawn up by UWI architect Gillian Scarlett, he drew up dimensions for a concrete core on which the slabs of engraved stone would be mounted, and faxed this to Jamaica for implementation. The concrete core stood waiting for several months while three other obelisks, crafted from local hand-cut limestone, with metal plaques, were also erected at locations approved by the UWI's Grounds Committee, a process piloted by Deputy Principal Joe Pereira.

The slabs were finally completed late in 2006, and they were mounted at the workshop of engraver Charles Anes so that interested Gibraltarians could see them. Then Lara had them crated and trucked from Gibraltar, via Spain to London, where they were airfreighted to Jamaica. As soon as he had news that the crates had been cleared and delivered to the UWI campus, Anthony Lara took a plane to London and on to Jamaica, to oversee the final mounting of the slabs on their base.

The final act, for him, was a brief wreath-laying ceremony on Thurs-day, February 15, the day after the obelisk was completed. He was joined by the UWI administration, headed by Mona Campus Principal Professor Elsa Leo-Rhynie, who expressed the UWI's pleasure at the collaboration, given the institution's interest in its rich heritage.

Explaining his determination to collaborate with the UWI Heritage Markers Committee on the Gibraltar monument, Anthony Lara said that his happiness at locating his grandmother's grave had been lessened by the knowledge that so many others were unremembered. The monument addresses that. He also expressed his appreciation to be linked with a programme that sought to remember and commemorate others who had lived and died on the site, across history.