DEMPSTER, ROLAND TOMBEKAI

Dempster Roland Tombekai (December 9, 1910 – September 24, 1965), author, member of the House of Representatives, eminent scholar, Professor of Latin and World Literature. He was born on December 9, 1910, at Tosoh on Lake Piso, Grand Cape Mount County.  

He attended St. John’s Protestant Episcopal Church School and Cuttington College graduating B.S. (Summa Cum Laude) in 1935, and M.A. in World Literature in 1942.  He served in many minor capacities in the Internal Affairs, Treasury, Public Works, and Utilities Departments, he was made Editor-in-Chief of the Liberian Age, a bi-weekly Newspaper in Liberia in 1954.  He was elected to the House of Representatives in 1964.

He was a professor of Latin and World Literature at the University of Liberia from 1948 to 1962.  To his students, he was the “Do or Die Professor,” who instilled in them, not only a sense of their responsibility but also one who stirred them up to think for themselves.

As one of the nation’s outstanding authors and poets, he wrote several books, novels, and poems. Among his works were Liberia’s Contribution to World Literature and A Literary Trip around the World, a survey of the Literature of the World with an emphasis on African Literature.  Famous among his novels was The Mystic Reformation of Gondolia, which he prefaced with some lines from the work of Goethe, Without Haste, Without Rest, Dempster’s “Gondolia”, though a fictional nation, may well be the society in which he lived and worked, and his protest against the moral, legal and cultural norms of that society.  In Gondolia, he pointed out the ills of his society and offered a blueprint for a change.

In the field of poetry, Dempster was outstanding.  Among his poems were: “Echo from the Valley,” “To Monrovia Old and New”, “Song Out of Midnight”, and “Melodies from the African Jungle”, a complete anthology of Liberian Poems, edited and annotated by him.  “A Song Out of Midnight” – a philosophy of life which best expressed his motto in life:  “It enjoined men to live a life of goodness, love, kindness, and service to their fellow men, so that their memories would live because of the good they did in their lives.”

The vast majority of his poems remained unpublished. Some have been translated into Hebrew, German, Latin, Italian and Spanish. His highest ambition was to become one of Africa’s most outstanding writers and philosophers.  This ambition was accomplished when he was nominated Poet Laureate for English-speaking Africa by the World’s Poet Laureate Organisation in 1965.

He died on September 24, 1965.  His life is a shining example and worthy of emulation.

ROBERT A. SMITH