A.J. Nicholson, Contributor
Young Shelly-Ann Fraser, gold medallist in the women's 100m dash at the ancestral city of Beijing, grew up in the community that is broadly known as Olympic Gardens. She has become an Olympic champion, recording the second-fastest time ever to win that event at those Games.
Her mother, Maxine Simpson, was quick to point to good parenting and the hand of earnestness on the part of teachers, coaches and other character-builders, for that Olympian climb.
As Ms Simpson, on that never-to-be-forgotten Sunday morning, stoutly affirmed the golden worth of proper parental guidance, she was equally quick to champion the cause of positive community bonding.
She was emphatic that the 'gunman', if he chose to pursue a different path, could father and produce champions in the mould of her own Shelly-Ann.
Record-breaking team
Olympic Gardens was named for the record-breaking team of the 1952 Olympic Games at Helsinki, Finland. New communities were being opened up in the city to the south and west of Molynes Gardens, and the government of the day sought to mark the Herculean efforts of that team that represented Jamaica at Helsinki.
Arthur Wint had mined our first gold medal at the Olympic Games at London, England, in 1948, in the quarter mile run with Jamaica's Herb McKenley earning the silver medal.
It was at Helsinki, however, that Jamaica placed its stamp firmly on the field of world athletics, not only by gaining gold and silver medals, but signalling our power by daring, as a colony within the British Empire, to establish a world record in the mile relay.
And so, just as is being suggested today, streets were then named for our record-breaking Olympians. In Olympic Gardens, therefore, one will find Olympic Way, Laing Road, McKenley Crescent, Wint Road and Rhoden Crescent.
These sprinters, just like our athletes through the years, have been 'blessed with the fleetness of Hermes' and, mercifully, they have not hidden their talents under a bushel.
That section of the city, in those days, was largely a lower-middle class area. It was a time of strong migration from country to town and several families that had spent their working years in rural communities chose to pass the late autumn and winter of their years in the bright lights of the Corporate Area.
Hardworking Jamaicans
So that, teachers, nurses, carpenters, masons, dressmakers, tailors and barbers, and others from across Jamaica invested in homes in those new communities for their retirement years.
These families were part of the backbone of Jamaica's transition from colonial status to Independence. These were individuals who had gathered the traditions from those who had reported them - the deacons and organists in the churches, the makers of cakes and dresses for weddings and Christmas and New Year celebrations; community volunteers. These were some of those who gave meaning and substance to the message that Jamaica Welfare was meant to convey.
The community bonding of which Shelly-Ann's mother, Ms Simpson, now trumpets so feelingly was therefore alive and well. It had to be so, for these were, for the most part, new families in a strange land of electricity and piped water and city life.
Essence of rural living
These new families brought with them the essence of rural community living, with every dwelling having a post card look, with its own flower garden to the front and side, and verandas that were picture perfect. Community living took centre stage.
There was another type of migration taking place. This was not an intra-island exercise, but a migration from Jamaica to foreign lands, in particular, to the 'Mother Country', England.
The sons and daughters of those retirees who had settled in these areas were some of the chief participants in this process of migration.
While some of those sons and daughters were to become the mainstay of mortgage payments for these new homes of their parents, their own children were left in the care of the grandparents. This was part of the heralding of the age of the 'barrel children'.
Over time, the grandparents passed away and some of the children who had been in their care were themselves taken to foreign lands by their own parents. The houses were then rented to strangers, but those premises would never come to be protected in the same way as they would have been cared for by their owners.
Several of those properties were owned jointly by the retirees and their children in the diaspora. After the death of the retirees, it became difficult to 'collect the rent', or agents simply chose not to account properly. Several owners in the diaspora abandoned the premises or the premises were just "captured".
The deterioration of the communities therefore began in earnest. Sadly, they have not recovered.
The giant, debilitating shadow of tribal politics and the sinister influence of the drug trade and the menace of the use of guns would also come to leave their sustained mark. The communities were left largely to devices that were not uplifting and, eventually, became part of what we now know as the garrison or the inner-city.
The deterioration of those communities included, of course, the roads that had been named for the Olympic champions of 1952.
Remember our champions
The suggestion, now, that certain roads should be named for our present-day champions serves to remind us that there are persons and families living in those communities who have never forgotten the road to success for their children. That road to success is constructed and surfaced with the treasure of character-building.
And that is why from those very communities have come engineers and professors, artistes in varying fields of cultural expression, scientists, beauty queens, medical men and women, culinary experts, sportsmen and women and entrepreneurs, and more.
That is why Shelly-Ann's father asserts with pride: "She come off a good table", for, that Jamaican expression envelopes the fulcrum of solid parenting and proper upbringing.
That is the feature that runs like a coloured thread through the web of the achievements of every single one of those athletes in Beijing, the treasure of character-building.
And so, regardless of the circumstance of birth and environment, unexciting or privileged, rural, uptown or downtown, Usain, Veronica, Melaine, Shelly-Ann, Asafa, Michael, Nesta, Kerron, Simone, Shericka, Novlene, Rosemarie, Shereefa and all of their fellow travellers could not have reached the pinnacle without that core element in the composite of their make-up. They all "come off a good table".
Our troubled Jamaica owes an eternally unpayable debt of gratitude to the character builders to whom Shelly-Ann's mother makes evange-listic reference. These are the teachers and the coaches, the religious and other counsellors, the groundsmen and the nutritionists and the administrators, and so many others.
For, as we know, not even the effervescence of Usain will convince the world that Jamaica's stellar performance at Beijing was attained by sudden flight.
Take the case of the administration of athletics in Jamaica. It could hardly be doubted that this takes place within a competent and composed organisational framework. If the administrators themselves did not care, the efforts of the other character-builders would have come to naught.
Jamaicans must have been buoyed by the character of the reported approach of the president of the Jamaica Olympic Association, the Honourable Mike Fennel, in a more- than-ticklish moment.
The entire world had moved to chastise President Jacques Rogge for 'misbehaviour' in his criticism of the fleet-footed Bolt. Fennel said that he would "have a word with him". Not that he would tell him to "tek weh yuhself"; for, with respect, that kind of response, with Jamaica already on top, is no string to the bow of character-building.
Surely, the head of this exemplary Jamaican organisation cannot be accused of 'misbehaviour' in the execution of this public service that he has been commissioned to perform in leading the Olympic fraternity on behalf of his brothers and sisters.
Of course, the efforts of the character-builders would be immeasurably less challenging if Melaine's pleas and supplications, and those of Maxine Simpson, should quickly come to bear fruit.
Melaine's performance and attitude in Beijing are stuff that dreams are made of. Our cherished Olympian, Deon Hemmings, will agree that the sheer grace, the style and the poise exhibited in that golden effort might be equalled, but not surpassed.
Plaintive cry for peace
In the wake of her record-breaking exhibition on the other side of the globe, as the gods on Mount Olympus smilingly welcomed her into the pantheon of the chosen few, Melaine's immediate comment was the plaintive cry for a peaceful and crime-free homeland.
The question is: Will those prayers come to be answered before the coming Olympic excursion to London, England, in the year of our Lord 2012, and where our first signals were sent 60 years ago, in the Games of 1948?
In the meantime, let us bask in the glory, and draw inspiration from Usain Bolt standing on the shoulders of Les Laing, Arthur Wint, Herb McKenley and George Rhoden, looking across steadfast and gratefully at the character-builders.
A.J. Nicholson is Opposition spokesman on justice. Feedback may be sent to columns@gleanerjm.com
