Julien: He helped build UWI Engineering Faculty

Former president the late George Maxwell Richards by merit of his own scholarship and hard work achieved a promising position in Shell (Trinidad) Oil Company but gave it all up to serve as a lecturer at the University of the West Indies (UWI), St Augustine. So said fellow engineer and chairman of the University of Trinidad and Tobago Prof Ken Julien in his eulogy yesterday at Richards’ funeral at NAPA, Port of Spain (POS).

Richards, one of five siblings, had earned an exhibition (scholarship) to study at Queen’s Royal College, POS. While Julien recalled, “we were aware of each other”, he said the rivalry in academia and sports between QRC and St Mary’s College (where Julien studied) had blocked any chance of the two being friends back then. However their friendship developed when they both went to England to study, Richards doing Bachelor’s, Master’s and Doctorate degrees.

After, Richards joined Shell which had earmarked him for a prominent career in TT and globally, but he resigned in 1965 to join UWI as part of a team of West Indians recruited after expatriate staff had suddenly resigned en masse. He served as UWI principal from 1985 to 1996, Julien related.

As President of the Republic, Richards had sought “a stronger, unified and compassionate” TT. “He never shied from controversy but did what was right.”

These sentiments were echoed by Finance Minister Colm Imbert who told Newsday how his own father had been a close friend of Richards in the 1960s as part of a small cohort of local engineers who had saved and built up the UWI Faculty of Engineering after the expatriate exodus.

Imbert also related that in 1991 he had stood as a general election candidate but had faced action by some staff at UWI opposed to the People’s National Movement. He recalled showing a protest letter against his candidacy to Richards who had greatly comforted him by his cool reassurance to him, “Don’t worry about this rubbish.”