Both Sides of The Coin: The Story of The Central Bank of Barbados 1972-2017

viii me: one was “on no account be a hagiographer” which was a caution against glossing over people’s faults. I felt that I could avoid that temptation. The other was “tell a good story, with full human interest”. I took this last one to heart and decided against writing a dry economic or banking history; over the years the Bank’s economic and financial policies had been well-chronicled in the Annual Report and other publications. The human interest aspect also appealed to me because it is people who, after all, make history. So I wanted, whereever possible, to make the Bank’s staff the focus of the story. I also was faced with a choice between using a thematic approach or a chronological treatment. I ended up employing both methods; it seemed to me that, while there were definite structural breaks in the way the Bank evolved, there were a number of interesting stories that cut across the time periods and could stand on their own. I was amazed at the wide range of internal documents on which I could draw. These included Minutes of Meetings of the Board of Directors which filled several volumes, Annual Reports, special publications, departmental documents, as well as records of the Bank’s old Staff Association, the Union Division and the Sports and Cultural Club. I got Governor Springer’s permission to read the Board Minutes and was on my way. After much agonizing, which included perusing other bank histories (the Bank of Guyana’s was one) the first paragraph was written sometime early in 1996. The intention was to publish the document for the Bank’s 25th Anniversary, which meant having some kind of draft ready very early in 1997. I soon realized that to carry out my day-to-day functions as adviser and push ahead with the history required some assistance and I had someone in mind. I had just joined the mentorship programme at the Cave Hill campus of the UWI and had been assigned to a very bright young lady called Jennifer Griffith. At the end of her second year of studies, Jennifer was looking for a vacation job, so I asked Governor Springer, and he agreed, to give her an assignment in the Governor’s Office as my research assistant on the project during the summer of 1996. I continued to spend as much time as I could on the project, but