I feel deeply honoured to have been asked by Geraldine’s family to deliver this eulogy.

I have undertaken many an assignment in my day, but none with such foreboding as this.  For, how does one do justice to such a monumental figure, one with such irrepressible…., volcanic energy, an energy which won’t be totally consumed, I suspect, even by death itself?

So, let me say to Geraldine something I had cause to say to her frequently, face to face: ‘Geraldine, behave!’   To which, quick as a flash, the reply would come:  ‘Why?  You doh see these so-and-so people getting me damn vex?’

Love still, Sis.  Whatever you might find wanting in the next few minutes, doh vex wid me!

There are many battles which are never won in the lifetime of a generation.  Struggles which are seemingly endless and which each succeeding generation must join in audacious affirmation of our right to free expression, our fundamental instinct for freedom, our essential creativity and our capacity to transform ourselves and change the world through artistic expression, through being the embodiment of the immanence of culture and through our unwavering belief in what we can be.

Geraldine Roxanne Connor was socialised and nurtured in the struggle that was joined by the generation that went before her….  Humble souls, yet iconic figures such as Rosa Cuthbert Guy, Una Marson, Cy Grant, Errol John, Lloyd Reckord, Joan Hooley, Earl Cameron, Nadia Cattouse and of course the major influences in her life and chosen career, her own parents, Edric and Pearl Connor. Read the rest of this entry →