A suggestion has been thrown out to former college and university students in Anguilla to form an Alumni Association. The idea has come from the Rev Dr Wycherley Gumbs who was a lecturer at the University of the Virgin Islands.
Back home, after serving in the Methodist Ministry in St Thomas, US Virgin Islands, and various other parts of the Caribbean, the Superintendent Minister of the Anguilla Methodist Circuit made the suggestion while speaking in an interview with The Anguillian on Tuesday this week.
While in St Thomas, Rev Dr Gumbs lectured at the University of the Virgin Islands in Philosophy and History. “A lot of the students in Anguilla have come to my classes. I have met many of them and I am proud of them,” he recollected. “Anguillian students have done very well at the university. Oftentimes I met them in the halls and, when they heard who I was, they were amazed that an Anguillian was among them. I was happy to meet them and to know them.
“I hope we can start an alumni here and this is what I want to say to them whether they went to the St Croix or the St Thomas campus. We need to start an alumni and hopefully we can begin canvassing those persons. By that method they can help Anguilla, as a joint body, and not just by having degrees, but using those degrees to lift the culture as well.”
The Anguillian Methodist Minister has all the necessary time on his hands to engage in various worthwhile undertakings, notwithstanding his commitments to the local circuit. “I actually did superannuate just to get home to Anguilla, but I am back in the full work,” he said, having returned recently to the island from his previous posting in St Kitts. “My wife, Stella, and I, have four children – three sons, a daughter and three granddaughters. Stella comes from Sandy Ground and everybody knows the Carty family there.
“We are home to stay so I might give the rest of my days to my country. If I go anywhere, it will be for short stays – three months may be the most – but that is not in the making except something comes up. UVI wants me to come back, but I told them I am not going back to UVI. I am grounded. I serve the church and community in poetry, other writing and community work – all for Anguilla’s good. I am here not to compete with anybody. I don’t need that. I prefer to work with anybody for the good of Anguilla.”
Rev Dr Gumbs entered Seminary in 1968 in Jamaica shortly after graduating from The Valley Secondary School and serving as a Primary School Teacher. He graduated as a Methodist Minister in 1972, but finished a Bachelor’s Degree in 1973 at the University of the West Indies and Seminary.
He was later awarded a scholarship by Pittsburgh University where he did a double Master’s Degree in Education and Divinity. Following that, he worked in St Eustatius and Dominica. He was also the Principal of St Andrew’s Methodist High School in Dominica.
He returned to the University of Pittsburgh where he did his doctoral studies for his PhD. It was after those studies that he served in the Ministry in St Thomas for a number of years and also lectured at the University of the Virgin Islands.
