AS TOLD TO BC PIRES

My name is Derwin Howell and I am involved in the promotion of David Rudder’s last big concert, his 7.0 show at Sound Forge next Sunday.

I spent the first two years of my life in Belmont, but we moved down to Diamond Vale in 1964. So I consider myself a Vale man. I live in the West still.

Diamond Vale was a middle-class neighbourhood. Coast Guard and army people, public servants. My parents were both teachers. This was before the days when houses had fences and burglar-proof. You could run from yard to yard to yard. The worst thing was if you trip and fall into picker bush.

I don’t know if it was the good fortune or misfortune to go to Richmond Street Boys’ Anglican, where my father was teaching the standard five class upstairs. You dared not get in trouble downstairs. There were consequences to that upstairs. Everard “Gally” Cummings and Russel Latapy went there.

The worst torture was to send a child to the tamarind tree to pick they own whip! The Blind Institute just up the road, where they made canes, was another source of the rods of correction.

Remember that old TV show, My Three Sons? My mother really had to deal with that. I am the eldest. She just celebrated her 87th birthday and he will celebrate his 89th in June. I’ve been with the same woman for 25 years.

Long ago, everybody wanted to be a doctor or a lawyer. Now the opposite seems to be happening. Both our kids are creatives. One is into film writing and one is photography, design and journalism.

I am the chairman of Habitat for Humanity in Trinidad. I’m also the chairman of Filmco, which runs the TT Film Festival.

We really need to see how we can build opportunities for young creatives in the country.

I went to St Mary’s from 1974-’80 and I was in the cadet force, so I was always a kind of leader. I was a sergeant major by the time I left after six years. I think that training has been foundational for me.

It’s a shame that the cadet force, so crucial to youth development, is maybe not being used enough. It was really different in our time. People told me, “I not in that running around holding rifle over your head business.”

But it built character. It built discipline. I’ve seen cadets rise to leadership roles across Trinidad and Tobago.

I’ve enjoyed what I’ve done for sure, for sure.

I did electrical engineering at UWI and then joined the Telephone Company in 1983 and worked with the likes of Neilson Mackay, Richard Jackman and Neil Guiseppi for ten years. Yes, BC Pires, in the days of Telco Poops.

I left to set up Linx for the banks in 1994. It was a jump into financial services. It changed how we all did payments.

After three years there, I was attracted to Republic Bank.

After running IT in the bank for eight or nine years, the CEO asked me to run the branch network.

I kinda watched him. My head was going, “Are you mad or what?” But what came out of my mouth was, “Okay, I’m willing to make the change!” I ran the branch network for five years. Then the bank bought the Barbados National Bank a