Garrison honours Nichols

Reverend Devere Murrell blessing the plaque. (Pictures by Lennox Devonish.)

Members of the Cadet Corps on parade at yesterday’s ceremony.

Thu, June 28, 2012 - 12:06 AM

Cadet leader Major Rawlston Nichols, who passed away in 2004, was memorialized Tuesday when the parade square at the Garrison Secondary School was named in his honour.

At a ceremony during which there tributes in song and poetry, none was more fitting than the unveiling of the plaque by Acting Principal David Christie and chairman of the Board of Management Junior Allsop.

Major Irwin Boyce remembered Nichols as a man who worked tirelessly to enhance the Number 14 Cadet Company lifting it to a level where it won many awards and prizes.

He said that under Nichols’ leadership, the unit rose to prominence winning several competitions including the Commandant’s Company in 1990 and 1991and the Inter-Company Shoot in 1990.

Yesterday, work colleagues, former cadets and other officers fondly remembered the man who enlisted in the Barbados Defence Force in 1984 and was one of the first batch of officers specifically trained to work with cadets.

He gave more than 20 years of unbroken service to the cadets and up until the day before his death was actively involved in a cadet camping activity.

“Major Nichols was a man of superlative standards, complete integrity and boundless enthusiasm for whatever task he took in hand, Boyce said. “No one whose privilege it was to know him and or with him

is likely to forget the candour of his speech, his mentoring ability, his penchant for humanitarian work and the value of his friendship.” (LK)