Uncle Roy passed away yesterday at Black River Hospital. We will miss you Uncle Roy, but God knows best. You will forever live in our hearts. RIP until we meet again.

Rest in peace cuz, till we meet again.

Was Delroy Ebanks from Flagaman?

No. He is from Sandy Bank.

my condolences goes out to the Ebanks family of sandy bank,with the passing of Delroy.may his soul rest in peace.

THIS IS A SLIGHTLY EDITED VERSION OF THE EULOGY I DELIVERED AT ROY'S FUNERAL ON SEPTEMBER 13:

It is the height of the Christmas festivities and two young men are making their way from one end of Sandy Bank to the other, and beyond.

One of them is tall and pencil thin, the other is shorter and stocky, but let me be clear: this is not the start of a Mutt and Jeff joke – these were real people, essential fabrics of the tapestry of life, the simple life, as we knew it back then, in our community.

Their routine was a simple but effective one – at each home they stopped, they would bombard their hosts with jokes in abundance. The tall, angular Eddison James, whom we all knew as Mr. Mook, would dryly deliver his lines with a straight face, evoking peals of laughter, even as he kept his composure, and surveyed the ‘damage’ he had done. Roy, on the other hand, was like our uncle, Hartwell, breaking into laughter even before he had begun one of his hilarious tales, so much so that you could not help yourself; he had hooked you even before the punch line had been delivered.

At each stop they received generous helpings of drinks and food, “for services rendered.” But, just as there were differences in how they delivered their jokes, they differed in how much they consumed of what they received. Mr. Mook took more of the drinks while Roy had a preference – a strong preference - for the food – curried goat, chicken, pork, fruit cake; you name it, he had his name on it!

But let there be no doubt: I am not here to reduce the life of Delroy Ebanks to the status of a mere cartoon character. He was a man of substance and worth, not in respect of wealth, but in what mattered most – in his drive to be independent from very early in life, in his love for life, and most of all, in his love for others.

Roy was the second child of Bradley and Gurdine Ebanks, born March 10, 1951.

Uncle Brad was a fisherman, but of his four sons, only Richard was destined to follow him into the sea – at least for a while.

Roy wanted to be a professional driver from an early age and, as a teenager, went off to the Cobbler camp in Manchester for his first lessons. At 17, he took further driving lessons at Pinto’s driving school in Kingston.

Professionally, he started driving pick-up vans for fish vendors, and one of his first bosses was Albert Gordon. He also briefly drove for my father – his uncle Carl – until a terrible crash on Spur Tree Hill brought an end to that particular enterprise.

It was while he was driving that van (licence #LM81) that he gave me my first mini driving lesson behind the steering wheel of a vehicle – in Christiana!

It was as a bus driver, however, that Roy was best known, and that’s how he mostly made his living, driving buses with exotic names such as Treasure Girl, and Ambassador, which plied the route from Balaclava-to-Black River-to-Treasure Beach.

That’s a journey which, decades before, his grandmother, Alice Moxam, used to make, not in the relative comfort of a bus, but on the back of a donkey, as she took fish to market at one end of the journey and brought back produce to sell at the other end, in Treasure Beach.

Eventually, Roy moved to Montego Bay where he lived and worked for 20 years, driving the bus, “King Alphanso.”

While he was in Montego Bay, thoughts of home and loved ones were never far from his mind. His trips home were numerous and his parents could always look forward to him generously sharing with them whatever he had. This spirit of sharing and caring extended to his wider family and many will testify to that fact.

Perhaps the leading voice in support of that assertion is that of his cousin – Barry Buchanan.
The wider Jamaica knows him as the Reverend Dr. Barrington Buchanan, respected Anglican Minister and transformational Principal of Black River High School (recently retired).

That level of upward social mobility was hardly assured, however, when, at a very tender age, Barry was struck by a disability that rendered physical mobility a major challenge. In the period before he spent three years at Mona Rehabilitation Centre in Kingston, Barry relied on the strength of his siblings and cousins to move around, and none was more faithful to that cause than Roy. Not only did Roy carry Barry on his back to and from school, he also stood up for him in the face of bullies who somehow thought it was great fun to tease and physically hurt a small boy who had already been dealt a cruel blow by the cold hand of fate.

But it did not stop there: Roy enabled Barry to, in a sense, stand up for himself! They devised a fighting method: Barry would climb onto the shoulders of Roy, and from that elevated position, he would smite his adversaries into submission.

His legs might have been weak, but there was nothing wrong with his hands, and so with the support of his loving, caring cousin, this unique fighting partnership was formed – one with a sturdy pair of legs and shoulders rippling with strength – the other, as ferocious as a tiger and with hands as swift as Muhammad Ali’s.

That partnership did not end there however, as Roy ensured that, as a young man, Barry was not left behind in the pursuits in which young men indulge. Wherever Roy’s bus route took him, Barry was there with him and therefore got to know a fair bit of the country’s geography simply by virtue of that partnership. They even competed for the attention of a particular young lady. Barry tells me that he won that contest, and since dead men tell no tales, we will just have to take HIS word for it!

What is certain, however, is that the outcome of that particular bit of rivalry did not lessen the love that Roy had for his cousin, and it was a generosity of spirit that extended to all of his family and wider circle of friends.

None of us is destined to remain in this mortal form forever. One generation comes, plays its part on the grand stage and exits, making way for new actors in the unfolding drama of life.

And so I invite you to travel back in time with me to a scene, as described by Barry. As very young boys, more than 50 years ago, he and Roy sat by the tombs of our great grandparents – Richard ‘Sonny’ Moxam and Louisa Moxam (both born in the 1860s) – and played dominoes, innocently free of all the cares of the world.

I’m sure we all hope that on this day in 2014, Roy is in a better place, communing in love with Pa Sonny and Ma Louisa.

Well done Earl! Thank you very much.

Earl, could you please pretty please post the rest of the eulogy

Hi, Barry's college mate. There's really nothing of great substance that was left out, and certainly nothing relating to Barry.