Professor Harold Drayton, a distinguished academic who was instrumental in the establishment of the University of Guyana, died on Sunday March 11 in Gaithersburg Maryland, United States.
Dr. Drayton was educated at Queen’s College in Guyana and at the University of Edinburgh where he completed a doctorate on cancer virology, while serving as the first President of the Federation of West Indian Student Unions of the United Kingdom. He began his distinguished career as a high school teacher in Grenada and Jamaica in the late 1950s. In 1962, he was a lecturer in Zoology at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology in Kumasi, Ghana when he was recruited by Cheddi Jagan, then-Premier of British Guiana, to establish the country’s first university.
Dr. Drayton oversaw the 1963 founding of the University of Guyana, including the recruitment of faculty and administrative staff, and served as a Professor of Biology and the university’s first Deputy Vice-Chancellor and Vice Principal. He was head of the university’s Biology Department from 1963 to 1972. During this tenure he introduced curriculum in Social Biology, Caribbean Health Studies, and training for public health professionals that would be widely adopted across the region.
Dr. Drayton also served as a Caribbean Regional Advisor in Human Resources Development for the Pan-American Health Organization (PAHO) in Barbados, and was Director of the Center for International Health of The University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston, Texas. Throughout his career he served as an advisor, consultant and advocate to the University of Guyana and Guyana’s Ministry of Health and was a consultant to the Caribbean Community Secretariat.
Dr. Drayton is survived by his wife Dr. Vonna Lou Caleb Drayton, an Epidemiologist and Public Health Specialist at Booz Allen Hamilton in Washington D.C.; his children Ms. Alison Drayton (Falzon), a Principal of Drayton Sher Lawyers in Sydney, Australia and Dr. Richard Drayton, the Rhodes Professor of Imperial History at King’s College London; grandchildren Elliott and Samuel Falzon and Lucie and Sarah Drayton; and his siblings Mrs. Thelma Vincent, Mrs. Eileen Woo-Ming, Dr. David Butts, Mrs. Sulsie Muchal and Mrs. Shar Glickman. He is mourned by his son-in-law, Mr. Edmund Falzon and daughter-in-law Dr. Vita Peacock Drayton, as well as his many relatives and friends around the globe.
A celebration of the life of Professor Harold Drayton will be held at the Gaithersburg Marriott Washingtonian Center on Saturday March 31st, 2018 from 2 PM to 5PM.
Dr. Harold Drayton was the author of An Accidental Life
