GG'S Achievement Award Winner For St. Mary - John Drake ­ emerges from a life of fiery trials, mishaps

By Leonardo Blair, Staff Reporter

Drake

HE HAS been through a hurricane, two fires, and he lost his father before he became a teenager. From the look of things, there's no way the Governor-General's Achievement Award could have been in his future.

"Suprise! That's what it was, a suprise," said John Drake, St. Mary's Governor-General's Achievement award recipient for 2001. His friends say he deserves it but Mr. Drake, 74, is humbled by the award. "I feel very honoured ... very proud. My friends tell me that I deserve it. Everybody said 'boy you well deserve it' ... but I am not one of those who push for anything. I feel very honoured and humbled," he said.

The hardware merchant has emerged from a life of fiery trials and mishaps to become one of St. Mary's respected sons. His father was a small farmer who sold agricultural crops in the Brown's Town market to support his family while his mother made sure things were comfortable in the home for them.

In 1938, when John was just 11, his father died and his mother had to care for both his brother and himself until she remarried and moved to Retreat, St. Mary. Here, John was able to attend the Retreat Elementary School.

He excelled at his studies but his mother was unable to support both boys so she sent him to live with his uncle in Annotto Bay, St. Mary.

"I was fairly bright," he said, "my mother realised that she could not afford to look after my brother and I at the same time, so she sent me to my uncle in Annotto Bay. He had a small grocery shop so I worked in there while I attended the Annotto Bay Elementary School," he said.

Mr. Drake's uncle paid for his extra lessons and he worked hard at the shop. He reached sixth standard in Elementary school and was successful in his First, Second and Third Jamaica Local Examinations. His uncle could not afford to send him to secondary school so in 1944, the year when Mr. Drake turned 17 and a hurricane devastated St. Mary, he sent him to find a job as a store clerk at Johnson and Company.

Knowing that he wanted to be a businessman, Mr. Drake completed a correspondence course in Business Administration and Accounting soon after he started working at Johnson and Company. He worked there for nine years and was promoted from a counter clerk in the hardware department to chief store clerk.

Mr. Drake married Cynthia Levy, a young registered nurse working at the Annotto Bay Hospital. They soon started a family and Mr. Drake's pay cheque could no longer support his growing household. He left Johnson and Company and started a small grocery shop. After three years, he closed the grocery shop and pumped his assets in a hardware store.

" ... after three years I realised that (the grocery shop) wasn't getting me anywhere and I saw the need for a hardware business because there was only one hardware in Annotto Bay, the very place where I used to work." Mr. Drake worked hard and his business grew but on November 3, 1974 arsonists burnt his store to the ground. Just when he had reached "peak performance."

"I was really on top then. I was importing my own lumber and all that type of thing. It was a very devasting fire."

But according to Mr. Drake "I was very determined that I would not make the fire stop me from going where I wanted to go." He had very little insurance at the time so he had to start virtually from scratch to rebuild his store. Fortunately for him, his reputation with the hardware dealers and banks, was good so they gave him all the help they could to rebuild his store.

"They all came down and said we'll help you. There was a tree at the back of the hardware. So I started to operate under the tree before the week was out. I put up a sign which read 'Drake is back around the back,'"

Mr. Drake managed to rebuild his store with a mountain of resilience and raw strength but just as he was finished, disaster struck again. "They tried to burn down the store again," he said.

But this time the fire wasn't as devastating. He had adequate insurance and the lumber house had been rebuilt with concrete.

Mr. Drake's experience in life coupled with his commitment to God for the last 61 years, has created a compassionate philanthropist among the Annotto Bay community. He has served as a Justice of the Peace for more than 30 years and is among other things, an active member of the Jamaica Agricultural Society.

For him, there is no substitute for hard work. "You must work hard, be honest and you must trust in God," he said.

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