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By Gercine Carter
Once a prominent attorney in Barbados, Michael Simmons suffered a devastating fall from grace and left Barbados in 1993 under a cloud of controversy, allegedly leaving behind “millions of dollars in debt” and a legal career in tatters.
He sought refuge in the United States where he has been residing for more than 30 years, during which time he worked on rebuilding his life.
Now age 91, he managed to rise from the ashes and has chronicled his life experiences and has also bared his soul on his ordeal, in a 326-page book entitled The Life Of Mike Simmons,
An Ordinary Bajan Boy.
It is an exposé on the many facets of his life, with the highs and lows, and a history of Barbados through which he defied racism in a process which he described in the book’s introduction as trying “to excavate the history of a period that encapsulates the living conditions of the era in which I was born and raised”.
He wrote: “I invite you to join me as I recount tales of struggle through my early life as an ordinary black Bajan boy, poor, underprivileged and deprived, to my achievement of scholastic success, athletic prowess, professional accomplishment, business, sports and corporate achievement . . . all to be followed by political oppression, temporary failure and downfall; some self-inflicted, some externally imposed, some voluntary, some involuntary and for some of which I take full responsibility and in respect of which I express sincere remorse to all whom I might have caused hurt while I was in freefall.”
At 87, Simmons undertook the “monumental challenge of chronicling my life story”, which has just been published, and giving the reason behind the venture, he said: “At the age of 91, there are not many people living who could relate to the period of life which I’m referring to in Barbados.” The book’s narrative dwells primarily on living conditions and general social and political developments in Barbados during the mid-20th century, as he explained: “Then there was only four per cent white in this country, but Blacks were under total control of four per cent of the population and there was a harsh relationship between us as a population – between black and white. It was a plantocracy. The Whites controlled everything.”
One of four children, he was born in Derricks, St James, to working-class parents Eustace and Geraldine Simmons. His family’s chattel house, like so many others throughout Barbados, had no indoor plumbing and families made use of the “outhouse” in the backyard, fetched water from the “stand pipe”, and raised sheep, cows, pigs and chickens in the backyard to supplement food and income.
Joined police force
Simmons noted the hardships going back to his parents’ time. “Our dad, with only an elementary school education, entered the workforce as a teenager, employed by a middle-class black building contractor at 25 cents per day . . . but when at age 20 or so, he gained entry into the police force, he began a programme of self-teaching . . . the progress of which brought him rapid promotions up the ranks of the force and on the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939, on the recommendations of the British expatriate Commissioner of Police in Barbados, he was appointed deputy to Colonel Paton the head of the Barbados branch of the British War and Colonial Office.” Eustace Simmons passed on the lessons of developing himself to his children, motivating them to follow suit in order to achieve similar upward mobility. He showers praise on his father for motivating him and engineering his entry into Harrison College, then an elite institution with a mainly white student roll. “The struggle was great,” he said. “My father wanted to send all three of us (him and his brothers Keith, an attorney and former Government minister, and Erskine, a doctor) there [but he] could not raise $85 a term,” for all three boys to go to Harrison College. Instead, Erskine and Keith went to Combermere
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while their sister Letitia went to Alexandra School.
Simmons recalled his parents’ struggle in his first year at Harrison College when they could not afford the daily bus fare to and from school.
“As a result, I joined many other boys who travelled to school by a second-hand bike . . . but unlike most boys who resided in close proximity to the school and rode their bikes over a distance of two or three miles, my ride was six miles each to and from school and, on most occasions, after playing football or cricket, I reached home after 7 p.m.”
Michael excelled at Harrison College where he studied the classics and was elevated to head prefect and deputy head boy, selected from a very impressive field of Harrisonians. He also carved out a niche in sport as Division 1 athletic champion, and captain of the First Division cricket and soccer teams.
Going to school in Bridgetown, he was even more sensitised to racism of the day, as he often observed the employment trend in Bridgetown businesses as he walked around the city.
“I realised there was hardly anybody black working in the stores on Broad Street and I saw white people as tellers in the banks . . . the banks used to take black boys and put them upstairs because the ground floor was the face of the bank.”
Racist boundaries
As a black boy at Harrison College, he aspired to transcend the boundaries of racism and in 1953 made his first step into the legal field, beginning to serve his Articles of Clerkship towards becoming a solicitor, under Bridgetown solicitor E. D. Rogers.
When the solicitor’s and the lawyer’s professions were later merged by amendment to Barbados’ Legal Profession Act in 1973 and solicitors could write a legal examination and gain subsequent certification through successful examination by the Law Society of England, in order to practise in the law courts, Simmons registered as an external student with the British Law School Gibson and Weldon. He earned his Intermediate Examination Certificate from the Law Society of England on July 12, 1956.
There was excitement among his former Harrison College peers when he became the first black man to join the prestigious white law firm of Cottle Catford & Co., the largest and oldest of the three white law firms in Barbados at that time, as a partner.
He went on to build a high-profile practice and during that time carved out other niches, excelling as a sports administrator serving on several national and international sports organisations.
Lost his way
It was in the glare of this spotlight as a sporting figure of note and as a prominent member of the legal profession that misfortune befell Simmons which caused him to eventually leave Barbados for the United States.
He wrote in the book’s Introduction: “Amidst it all, I lost my way in my effort to save the life of my beloved son Hugh Michael, brilliant, expressive, gregarious and honour student at three US universities . . . but who fell victim to years of drug addiction, which ruined his life and, but for the grace of Almighty God, almost ruined mine as well. In search of expiation as well as my own rehabilitation and renewal, I emigrated to the US in 1993 where I was rescued by divine providence from poverty and the jaws of imminent death, when three US physicians diagnosed that I was suffering from the insidious disease of colon cancer.”
He shared how he was “buttressed by the undying love and support of my beloved wife Belkis (Briceno)” and was “uplifted by prayer, atonement and redemption”.
At age 71, Simmons started to rebuild his life away from Barbados, changing career direction and eventually founding his own US corporation “Mike Golf Inc. and Mike Simmons Golf School” which he indicated has been a successful venture, “despite my awareness of the nightmare of insecurity in the marketplace that confronts every black entrepreneur in the United States of America and especially in Florida.
“I forged ahead . . . my school assumed a trajectory that belied all expectation . . . and now has a near five-star rating” as well as a ranking of “first among the ten best golf instructors and golf schools in Miami”, he said, speaking to this newspaper when he and his wife visited Barbados over the Christmas season.
Simmons held fast to his father’s advice given when he was a boy, to get up, dust himself off and start again, after any downfall.
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