I met Mr. Broomes one evening in Basseterre, St. Kitts, a few weeks before he was to leave for Anguilla when he was introduced to me by another British Guyanese teacher as an Anguillian student at the St. Kitts Nevis Grammar School . He was headed to work at the opening of the new school on Anguilla. Mr. Smith asked me to answer questions about Anguilla: boarding houses, restaurants, beaches etc.The latter was the one area I could heartily recommend in those days….no electricity, paved roads, running water.
September 1953 saw the opening of the first Government Secondary School on the island.Before that students had to go to St. Kitts or Antigua to continue their education. There were attempts to provide secondary education by headmasters from other islands, Mr. De Shong as an example, but they failed soon after.
Mr James T. Thom was the first Principal and organizer of The Valley Secondary School Land Mr. Broomes was the Deputy Principal. Both held Bachelor of Arts degrees, in those days a rarity on the island. While Mr Thom’s duties were more aligned with getting the school up and running, with the day to day administrative functions, Mr. Broomes was the number one teacher of the few of us fortunate to be in his classes. Three years later the final Fifth Form comprised 12 of us, 9 boys and 3 girls.
He was the epitome of a well dressed and neat appearing gentleman. One could only marvel at the number of subjects he was so well versed in and taught.While other very capable teachers taught us a single subject or two, Mr Broomes taught us 6…English Language, English Literature, Latin and Mathematics (Arithmetic, Algebra and Geometry).
He brought to life, Alexander Pope’s Mock Heroic poem, Rape of the Lock, Shakespeare’s Macbeth and, from the Latin, taught us that great language and had us cross over the Pyranees with Hannibal in Latin. He navigated us through the difficult currency of the day, pounds, shillings and pence, Quadrilateral equations, Pythagoras’ Theorem , Sine, Cosine and Tangents and much more.
He was also very involved in the Sports programs at The Valley Secondary School and was instrumental in organizing the first inter-island competition when the Secondary school from Nevis came to Anguilla to compete in Track and Field, Cricket and Football. We beat them in Track and Field and Football and narrowly lost the cricket match. We were on the Map!
After two years when Mr Thom went to England to further his education, Mr Broomes took over the helm.The duty befell him to finally prepare us for the University of Cambridge Oversea School Certificate Exams.Those were the days before the CXC programs for which he became so renowned and richly deserving of such accolades. At the first sitting of these exams in December 1956, the majority of the students excelled , one of whom qualified for a First Division Certificate (probably unheard of from any previous Anguillian student ).
Alumni of that first small class acquitted ourselves with distinction. From that group of students emerged a Medical Doctor, an Attorney at Law , an Orthdontist , 2 School Principals (one of whom became the Principal of the school years later) , Registered Nurses and Financial and Insurance executives.
I am sure I speak for all of my classmates of the high esteem in which we held Mr Broomes…his expectation of our best efforts, encouragement in scholastics and post school work.
We have learned of his recent passing, are saddened, and express our sincerest condolences to all his family and friends.
To quote from Oliver Goldsmith’s Deserted Village, where he describes the “Village Master”, the same can be said of us gazing in wonderment at the time:
“And still they gazed and still the wonder grew,
That one small head could carry all he knew.”
Thank You, Mr Broomes, R. I. P.
Reg (Campbell) Lake
