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   BEYOND A MEMORIAL SERVICE FOR 
                                        JUSTICE IRA DeCORDOVA ROWE

  
Photo by Leona Minto

BY ROVAN G. LOCKE
On Sunday evening, February 8, 2004, at the Holy Sacrament Episcopalian Church at University and Davie Road extension, Fort Lauderdale, Florida; there was only standing room as Jamaicans from "all walks of life", other Caribbean residents in South Florida and members of the Church, came to celebrate the illustrious Life of the Legal Luminary, Justice Ira DeCordova Rowe. More than eight hundred friends, relatives, colleagues and admirers came to pay their ³final respects² to the diminutive man in physical size but a towering force in Jurisprudence, not only in his Country, but throughout the Caribbean and Central America. At the time of his death the Turks and Caricos Islands on Sunday, February 1, he was on Her Majesty¹s business as a member of that British Territory¹s Appellate Court, and he was the President of the Court of Appeals in Belize. Judge Ira Rowe, retired from the Jamaican Bench, as the President of the Court of Appeal. This is an unprecedented honor to have held dual Presidencies in both the Caribbean and Central America. 
At his funeral in Kingston, Jamaica, on Wednesday, February 4, more than three thousand Jamaicans paid their respects to a quiet but defiant naturalist who broke the Color Bar in 1944 at Monroe College, ³the exclusive high school² for the sons of the colonizers, in the hills of Malvern, St. Elizabeth, in Western Jamaica. It must be stated that Ira D. Rowe, left his mark, not only at Monroe but also in Diplomacy, representing his country, in ³the then Motherland² for most of the educated Jamaicans. In 1964, he was the Deputy High Commissioner of Jamaican High Commission in London. In 1965, he would serve as the Jamaican Delegate to the 20th Session of the General Assembly of the United Nations. Additionally, he distinguished himself and made Jamaicans proud in international forums (Fora). In 1965 he was appointed Delegate and Principal Speaker of the United Nations World Conference on Victim logy in Zagreb, Yugoslavia. At the 9th Commonwealth Law Conference held in Auckland, New Zealand, he eloquently advanced the causes of Advocacy, as the Principal Speaker, and he was the Principal Judge for the Moot Court Competition. IN 1984, Seaga regime honored him with the highest National Award, the Order of Jamaica. With such an unmatched record of meritocracy in Jurisprudence, Diplomacy and Church activities culminating with him, as the longest serving Chancellor of the Anglican Diocese of Jamaica, it was quit a surprise when this rural son of the soil who rose to pre-eminence in his society, was not given a state Funeral by the Patterson regime. It was a missed glorious opportunity by the Prime Minister Patterson who hails form the same region as Justice Ira D. Rowe, and has a similar childhood before distinguishing himself at the University of the West Indies and the London School of Economics. Certainly, he will be taking a lot of heat from his legal colleagues who expected that he would have done the right thing by declaring a State Funeral and representing his Government and the People of Jamaica at the final rites of this pioneering Jamaican. On a tragic note, he failed to carry out his Representative and collegial responsibilities.
At the memorial, Attorney David Rowe waxed eloquently on the meritous careers of his father. The Jamaican Consul-General, Ricardo Allicock, represented Prime Minister Patterson and read the first message. David¹s sister, Patricia found strength to remember her dad, who always reminded her on his trips home from college in Boston, "Tricia, nothing but the best".
See Pictorial...

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