Volume No. 2 Issue No. 56 - Thursday October 2, 2008
Former Chief Customs Officer Ernest Andre
1925-2008
Our Colonial Civil Service Legends at Twilight Time
 By Gabriel Christian Esq
When Ernest Andre, former Chief of Dominica�s Customs Service, departed this life on Saturday, September 27, 2008, a momentous chapter in our island�s civil service drew nearer to a close.
After 30 years of independence, we now take it for granted that locals run our affairs. It was not always that way. Among the first of the local born to ascend to the heights of the senior civil service, Andre became part of that legendary crew which is fast disappearing as time marches on.
The story of those who, like Andre, had their roots in the old British Colonial Service needs to be told and retold where their sense of duty and commitment to the state ensured a degree of efficiency, integrity, institutional stability and rule of law.
Born in Portsmouth in 1925, Andre�s father was the Road Supervisor for the Northern District and shopkeeper of note. As a child of some privilege by Dominican standards, and a former student of the Dominica Grammar School, he was possessed of a degree of discipline and intellectual rigor which led to his accumulation of a considerable library in excess of 500 books and a jazz collection of note.
After school, and chafing under the limits to personal growth in what was a colony, Andre was part of that exodus of Dominicans to the oil processing plants in Curacao during the war years 1939-1945. In Cura�ao he was to marry his teenage sweetheart Margaret LeBlanc of Veille Casse.
He served as a Laboratory technician for Shell Oil, while his wife served with the Teitelbaum family as a baby sitter. Andre returned to Dominica in 1961 with his children who had been born in Curacao: Allan, Yvonne, Ernest, and Irving. His youngest children Lenny, Celia and Austin were born upon his return to Dominica.
While I knew Mr. Andre from a distance, my first contact with him was related to his love for books and learning. While working with Rotary Club leader Allan Buntin in 1976 to unload donated books at the old Roseau port on the bayfront, Mr. Andre came up to where we were at our labours.
Meticulous in his white and blue Customs uniform, complete with epaulettes, he methodically leafed through the shipment of books eager to � in his words � ��get something good to inspire my boys.�
It may well be that one so inspired was his son Irving Andre who went on to become an Honours graduate in History, English and Philosophy from the University of the West Indies, doting father, loving husband, Assistant Crown Attorney, a prolific author, founder of Dominica�s first publishing house Pont Casse Press focused on the island�s history, and a Judge in Ontario, Canada. So too his other children did well; Alan in electronics, Ernest in music, Lenny in Architecture, Yvonne in law, Celia in interior design and Austin in auto mechanic engineering.
As a friend of Irving�s who benefited from his civic leadership qualities, sense of commitment to chronicling our history and passion for the development of our island, I cannot but remind all of the role played by the likes of Ernest Andre who were anchors of stability for a relatively young nation.
While consoling his wife and children, I recall his simple dignity and polite demeanor while he went about his task as a civil servant. May those who now occupy the position of public servant be similarly wedded to a profile of civility.
Many newly independent states in the post World War II period which failed to maintain administrative efficiency and integrity in their civil services, quickly plunged into chaos of a kind that many are yet to escape.
Simply put, the lights went out where there was not that cadre of committed local civil servants and institutions which kept the engine of the state humming. Such chaos consigned their peoples to harsh lives of poverty with scant hope for any advancement.
Dominica and Dominicans are therefore, fortunate to have had a core of civil servants who imbibed sufficient skill and discipline during the British colonial period � and afterwards - to keep our nation afloat.
We all won, where they were wise enough to place those attributes at the service of an independent Dominica and so fortify the institutions of the state. While they may have learnt their administrative craft in service of the imperial power, they were dutiful enough to consolidate the new state which was born in 1978 with their talents.
Now, twilight time draweth nigh. The shadows lengthen. The sunset beckons. Those of Ernest Andre�s generation make for their respective exits. But even as they enter that long night of well deserved rest, may we always remember what they taught us about duty, honor, and service to country over selfish interest.
May we, as a nation, consider that they did much, for little in way of wages. Let us then always applaud that generation which saw duty as being a job well done; a community well served.
By celebrating the commitment of these dedicated public servants, we appreciate that there are many unheralded heroes and heroines in our midst who quietly went about doing their best for our beloved Dominica when they toiled in the civil service.
There are many with us today who have learnt from the old timers; let us encourage them in that noble course of conduct. In so doing, these civil servants allow us to inhabit a stable � and mostly law abiding � society. In saluting Ernest Andre � while comforting his family and friends - we pay a well deserved tribute to them all.
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