The Tribune

By MARTIN LUNDY

Director of Sports

ANTHROPOLOGISTS agree the notion that the survival of any culture resides in the capacity of its people to cherish that which it has produced, using such indigenous commodities, human as well as capital, to construct positive patterns of living permanently alluring to successive generations of its citizenry.

Some centuries earlier, Cicero theorised that expressing gratitude is not only the greatest of the seven heavenly virtues, it ought be regarded as the parent of them all, dominating the province of all that is noble about any enlightened and progressive society.

Undoubtedly, these twin notions found best intersection in the life of my mentor, Gus Cooper, the first director of sports who easily qualifies as one of the most transformative treasures in Bahamian sport, fully deserving of a nation’s gratitude and adulation.

As one of three strong candidates who applied for the post of director of sports after Senator Kendal W Nottage became the first minister of sports in 1978, Gus’ unique credentials earned him that seminal post. He was largely tasked with administration and development of what was an original 512.92 acres of crown lands and wetlands granted by order of the legislative council in 1956 for the purposes of national sports development.

He assumed such a task with measured fanaticism fuelled by a passionate minister conscious of the cosmic reality that sports centre land was scarcely enough to accommodate the long term needs of the national sporting community, given that 75 per cent of its original acreage had already been devoured by other government agencies.

The new minister therefore placed a premium on protecting sports centre land, having already been well sized of one proposal to develop a new public hospital at the sports centre and another to relocate the Hobby Horse Race Track there.

Buttressed by the fierce loyalty of his faithful liege, Doyle Burrows, and his unrelenting fidelity to the sports power philosophy loudly espoused by his indomitable minister, Gus protected the sports centre as a national sports preserve, shepherding the redevelopment and naming of the Thomas A Robinson National Track and Field Stadium which first opened in 1968, the improved Andre Rodgers National Baseball Stadium which opened in 1967, the reconstructed South Beach Pools in 1983, the Blue Hills Softball Complex in 1984, the Churchill Tener Knowles National Softball Stadium in 1988, the Kendal G L Isaacs National Gym in 1994 and the National Lawn Tennis Centre in 1998.

Not so well known is the pivotal role of advocacy he played in defending Betty Kelly Kenning’s inclination to build the national swim complex at the sports centre, in opposition to lobbyists who wanted it built elsewhere. The swim complex opened at the sports centre in 2001.

Gus also spearheaded the development of the Grand Bahama Sports Complex in 1995.

Indeed, these historic accomplishments by Gus were not without their challenges as he was compelled to encounter a number of so called ‘Joshua’ generation ministers, all devoid of the genuine altruism found in the hearts of men and women dogmatically convicted to the precepts of sports power.

One such Joshua generation sports minister perceived land dedicated to sports development as more useful for housing or food production. Hence the use of sports centre land for the development of Millennium Gardens.

Minister Neville Wisdom rejected such an uninformed proposition when he interrupted the plans of zealots in the Ministry of Housing for further incursion into the sports centre.

Also, then Prime Minister Hubert Ingraham intervened to abort plans for a new law school at the sports centre, further instructing that the remaining 90 acres of sports centre property must be reserved for sports facilities. Those responsible for the current sports centre master plan apparently had difficulty with such instructions.

Gus’ larger contribution to national sports development was his introduction of enlightened thought to local sports administration. He insisted upon an end to the prevailing syndrome which permeated the misperception of athletes as being physically gifted but intellectually deficient.

His insistence upon scholarship enhanced the human capital of the sports division to the extent that sports officers and federation executives were figuratively transported from the dust of the playing field to the atmospherics of scientific planning.

He oversaw the establishment of high powered sports seminars and sports leaders conclaves featuring expert national and international speakers thereby elevating the organisational and management capacity of local sports leaders, physical education teachers, school coaches and Family Island Sports Council executives. The scholarship which he brought to sports translated into the kind of national and international sporting successes hereto for unmatched in the annals of Bahamian sport.

Here it is just as important to recall that Gus succeeded in winning the support of Minister Algernon Allen in his 10 years of battle to rationalise a career path for sports officers while at the same time addressing salary anomalies traditionally suffered not only by sports officers but also by officers in the Youth Division and those serving in the Department of Culture.

All these officers had academic credentials and work experiences similar to that of other professionals in the public service, in spite of which they were rated in far lower salary scales.

The unintended consequence of such an anomaly was difficulty in retaining and replacing competent officers.

Minister Allen took up Gus’ fight and, as a result, Youth, Sports and Culture officers were incremented and placed in more appropriate salary scales. In the ecology of local public institutions, the entire Ministry of Youth Sports & Culture benefitted at the hands of Gus Cooper yet that agency remains unchallenged as the most ungrateful of all public agencies to the men and women who bled it into existence.

Here it is appropriate to contrast such an assertion with Gus’ personal appreciation of his sports heritage and the traditions that shaped him. He avidly supported and contributed to a programme initiated by Minister Desmond Bannister to have Arlene Nash Ferguson write an entire series of primary school books that lionised the lives and achievements of members of the National Hall of Fame.

Gus was extremely pleased with Nash Ferguson’s first completion, a wonderful effort on Tommy Robinson meriting Nobel Prize consideration. He was most disconcerted that she was discouraged from continuance of such a nationally redeeming exercise.

As an intellectual descendant and administrative heir to one of the most accomplished sports administrators to grace these Islands and the wider Caribbean region then, some of us disciples are simply grateful to have sat at the feet of greatness and to have been exposed to the threads of legacy and the beads of national pride deeply ensconced in the soul of this country’s first director of sports.

Indeed, his great deeds will be his perpetual monument and his eternal rest in the bright light of peace has been so very well deserved. The Right Hand of God will continue to rest upon the foreheads of Cassie, Cisco and Augustus.