- Carlington Wilmot/Freelance Photographer
Dr. Lloyd Dayes received an award for outstanding Alumnus from Kingsway High School last Thursday. He is here in Jamaica for the school's 60th anniversary.
Nashauna Drummond, Staff Reporter
DR. LLOYD Dayes is only five feet, five inches tall but this 74-year-old is a man of immeasurable accomplishments.
A neurosurgeon, Dr. Dayes possesses four doctorates, one of which is in Divinity (DD) and one in Ministry (DMin). He is a member of innumerable societies and fellowships and has lectured on medical issues ranging from headaches to herpes. Currently he is pursuing a law degree as he is medical consultant for a law firm. Additionally, with the aid of a recent grant, he is continuing his research in the hopes of finding a cure for malignant brain tumours.
The retired Professor of Neurosurgery at Loma Linda University in California sat with The Sunday Gleaner and related a delightful story of a life full of mysticism and angels who have helped him achieve what he has today.
"My life has been saturated with God's guidance. Had it not been for His intervention ... well, life would have been different," he reflected.
Dr. Dayes grew up in Woodford, a small community far into the hills of St. Andrew, miles from Papine, with his adopted grandparents, while his mother, Edith Nicholson, worked in Kingston.
Tears rolled down his cheeks as he spoke of his mother and the sacrifices she made for him, moved by the thought that she did so much with nothing. There were days they went to bed without supper but the Lord provided, he said. She died at age 89.
He reflected with much emotion on the numerous 'angels' who have touched his life. He met his first at the age of 13. A bookseller, George Wilson, came to the village and told him: "You have to go to high school." He taught Lloyd how to sell books. Lloyd's mother, who only had a third-grade education, insisted that her son must have what she did not. Edith, a washerwoman, had worked hard and saved enough for him to start Kingsway High School. Unfortunately, after the first few weeks of school, he had to stop because she ran out of money for him to continue. After an absence of two weeks, he returned. She had saved enough.
The then principal, Stanley Bull, queried his absence. When confessing that his mother had no more money, Mr. Bull placed his hand on Lloyd's shoulder and told him, "Lloyd, Nancy (his wife) and I will pay for your schooling."
They were his second angel.
Through tears, Dr. Lloyd noted, "I'll never forget him. I felt like an angel had come out of the sky and rescued me."
In a happy turn of karma, Mr. Bull's son, Brian, later became a student of Dr. Dayes when he was a monitor at West Indies College (now Northern Caribbean University). Brian, a pathologist and haematologist, is currently a Dean at Loma Linda Medical School.
After teaching at West Indies College for two years and later at North Street Church School (now New Hope Preparatory), he left Jamaica with only US$200 in his pocket. He began his pre-medical training at Northern California's Pacific Union College and after two years was accepted to Loma Linda University. He could not afford the $480 down-payment on his tuition, so he ignored the first and second acceptance letters. He received a third letter informing him that he would lose his space. Still he did not respond and went to Sacramento, California, where he met yet another angel.
After giving a lecture, he was approached by a woman who wanted to know what his future plans were and left him with God's blessings. She returned to Colorado and contacted the university and asked them not to cancel his place. She sent the university a cheque for $1,500.
While in medical school, he sold books during the summer to support himself.
He was yet to meet another angel Jessie Chico. She bought a book from him and they kept in touch all through medical school and throughout his post-graduate training. She would occasionally send him five- or 10-dollar bills for pocket money and once a gramophone which he remembered with delight. Four years ago, Dr. Dayes went to Colorado to celebrate her 90th birthday with her. She reminded him of the Jessie Noyes Scholarship, which he received for his second, third and fourth year in medical school and confessed that it was actually she who had applied for the scholarship on his behalf and not the university, as he had always thought!
Lloyd Dayes had always wanted to be an internist/general practitioner. He had seen too many sick people in his life and wanted to make a difference. After post-graduate studies, he was bent on returning to Jamaica but was hindered because as a British colony then, the US certification (in medicine) was not recognised here. So he decided to study in Canada to be certified.
It was during his rotating internship at Montreal General Hospital, that a resident allowed him to make his first 'hole in the skull'. One of the doctors told him that he should go into neurosurgery because there were no Jamaican neurosurgeons. After five years at the Montreal Neurological Institute, he applied to the University of the West Indies Hospital but was informed that they could not afford him. Simultaneously, he was invited by Loma Linda University to help establish their Neurosurgical Department; he has been there for 36 years.
Dr. Dayes says he is motivated by "a force outside of myself given to me as a gift by God that points me to achieve out not only for achievement's sake, but to see if I can help others." He sees it as his obligation to "put back to the soil whatever I got from the soil." He noted that his wife, Thelma, is always encouraging him not to forget his roots where he is coming from.
Thirty years ago he established the Woodford Fund at Woodford All-Age School. Each year, a scholarship to attend Kingsway High School is awarded to an outstanding student.
Every year, for the past four years, Dr Dayes has travelled to a country overseas and gives one month's service to the poorest part of that country. He has been to New Guinea, a village in southern India, Dominican Republic and Nigeria.
Having overcome numerous hurdles, Dr. Dayes is a living testimony of his mother's words. She taught him that, "there isn't any difficulty that you will ever meet that there is not a solution. You might not find the solution but someone else will so you should not say there is no solution." Dr. Dayes maintains that the "humblest of beginning is no hindrance to the highest achievement."
