The Most Honourable Edward Phillip George Seaga, ON, PC, Jamaica’s fifth prime minister, was born in Boston, Massachusetts, on 28 May 1930 to Jamaican parents Phillip George Seaga and Erna (née Maxwell). The Jamaica Information Service records that he was brought home as an infant. In Kingston in the 1940s he went from Suthermere Preparatory to Wolmer’s Boys’ School — the school his father had also attended (Observer, sisters’ account, 29 May 2019). The Gleaner, reporting the 2015 Hall of Fame induction (5 October 2015), wrote that he “entered Wolmer’s Boys’ School in 1942, following in the footsteps of his father.” In a 30 May 2004 Gleaner review of Patrick Bryan’s school history he said, of Wolmer’s, “that is where my character was moulded under headmaster John Bunting.”

He played as a wicketkeeper-batsman in the mid-to-late 1940s, captained the senior second XI, and told the Gleaner (18 March 2007) that he first handled gloves at a Wolmer’s practice. The Observer obituary (29 May 2019) added that he represented the school in seven sports, including shooting. By 1948 he had left for Harvard, graduating in 1952 with a degree in the Social Sciences.

Sir Alexander Bustamante nominated him to the Legislative Council in 1959, at 29 the youngest member. Elected Member of Parliament for Western Kingston in April 1962, he held the seat until he retired in 2005 — forty-three years. He was Minister of Development and Welfare (1962–67) and Minister of Finance and Planning (from 1967). He led the Jamaica Labour Party from 1974 to 2005 and was prime minister from 4 November 1980 to 13 February 1989. Official lists credit him with Jamaica Festival (1963), Tivoli Gardens on the former Back-O-Wall site, the Urban Development Corporation, the Jamaica Stock Exchange, and HEART.

Queen Elizabeth II appointed him to the Privy Council in 1981. Jamaica awarded him the Order of the Nation in 2002. After politics he became an Honorary Distinguished Fellow at The University of the West Indies and, from 2007, chancellor of the University of Technology. He died of cancer in a Florida hospital on 28 May 2019, his eighty-ninth birthday. Trust Chairman Milton Samuda, in the Observer of 30 May 2019, called him “one of our most outstanding Wolmerians.”

Sources

Sources: JIS, Edward Phillip George Seaga, official PM profile; NLJ, Most Hon. Edward Phillip George Seaga, NLJ; Jamaica Gleaner, Wolmer’s inducts inaugural Hall of Famers, 5 October 2015; Jamaica Observer, Edward Seaga May 28, 1930 – May 28, 2019, 29 May 2019; The Guardian, Edward Seaga obituary, 28 May 2019.