42ND WEDDING ANNIVERSARY

My Parents' Wedding Anniversary

Wilmot Max Ramsay

(A Diary Excerpt, Saturday, March 31, 1990)

     I just put the finishing touches to my romantic slant which I have dubbed: ' A LOOK AT DANTE AND  PETRARCA'S STYLES.'  Today being my parents' -- Charles Adolphus Ramsay and Gwendolyn Victoria Scotland Ramsay -- wedding anniversary, I make this piece of writing a dedication to them.  Also, to be truthful, this essay of Renaissance thought is intended to charm someone within the garb of academe.  Of course, when she shall have read my writing it is my fervent desire to win her over.  She is Italian.

     Robert H. Spaethling, a professor at UMass/Boston, who is an acquaintance of mine and a friend of my father's, is visiting.  He is very curious about the final product of my paper.  Also, he is a professor at Harvard University.  He appears to be a very proud man.  I showed Professor Robert Spaethling my Honors paper and he expressed pleasure and said how much he enjoyed reading it.  We first met at Cafe Pamplona in Harvard Square, Cambridge, Mass.; a meeting arranged by my father, two years ago, in early 1988.  Back then, I was hell bent on going to Harvard but an abbreviated lecture from Robert H. Spaethling changed all that.  For better or worse, I relinquished my dream, did the application for the University of Massachusetts at Boston and was accepted.  Professor Robert H. Spaethling said to me, with words to the effect: It is better to be a big fish in a small pond than to be a small fish in a big lake!

     This utterance, I guess, was in reference to my, if I may say so, history-making political waltz in my native country, Jamaica, and which brought me to the United States eight years ago, in the summer of 1982, to accept an honorary Week, September 27 - October 3, as Wilmot Max Ramsay Week by proclamation of the Boston City Council on the recommendation of the youthful city father, Councillor Hon. Bruce C. Bolling.  He, Councillor Bruce C. Bolling, would later become the first person of color to serve as President of the Boston City Council.

     With all my accomplishments, however, I bemoan the fact that my mother, Ma'a Gwen, who lives in Jamaica with my maternal grandmother, Selina C. Chambers, is not here or for that matter my father is not in Jamaica to be with my mother for them to celebrate today's milestone of 42 years of matrimony.  For that reason, therefore, I dedicate my Honors Class paper, aforementioned, to my parents on this special day.  My siblings -- Headley (Al) and Henry (Robin) would agree.  My other older brother, Clifton (Bonnie), passed away on Saturday, February 28, 1981.  I trust that my flower will concur.