Tribute to Dr. (Prof) Alex Kwapong
John R Schram MA, LLD University of Ghana
Senior Fellow, Legon Hall
Canadian High Commissioner to Ghana 1994-1998
“Prof” was truly one of Ghana’s “Greats”: He has been in the pantheon of respected elders since his earliest days as an educator, classicist, disciplinarian, and revered vice chancellor. My earliest recollections of Dr Alex Kwapong were of him in that latter role: tall, imposing, as elegant as eloquent, filling the commanding heights of the Great Hall, grappling with the fractious students of 1966, challenged to respond to a particularly frivolous demand, then bringing all discussion to a halt with one word: “rubbish!”. Most astonishingly, everyone agreed with him; the hall fell silent, we students went back to their own halls - even the Vandals returned to Commonwealth Hall - tails between our legs. We were full of the wonder, respect and even affection that few in Ghana in those days could have won,
For all of us of a certain age, Prof was a hero for his years as Vice Chancellor, as the person who led the University from its infancy into a maturity that would be envied across Africa and admired around the world. But he went on to still greater accomplishments for himself and for so many international educational institutions. By the time I returned to head the Canadian High Commission in Ghana, he was a legend – and one with many more chapters still to be written.
Imagine the honour for me to find in 1994 that the vice chancellor from my 1966 university days, the man who then struck me with such awe, now talked with me as a friend and adviser. Imagine too how impressed I was to discover that the icon I had invested with such esteem because his knowledge of the history of man, of our strength and foibles from Greece to the present, had now become an innovative, internationally venerated master of the newest in global education, technology and governance. I was impressed, too, that he and his discerning wife Evelyn shared Alena’s and my faith – in fact, marked out our pew as we returned each Sunday to share the fan on the breeziest side of Accra Ridge Church.
I was even more flattered that Prof and Evelyn would invite this small boy from Legon Hall and his wife to dinner at their gracious home. These were precious ties with family, with Evelyn and daughters “one, two, three and four”, as Prof liked to introduce them so proudly. They were to Alena and me a great source of advice and encouragement through our four years in Accra.
Though these many years, Prof has been the outstanding symbol of all that has won. Ghana and Ghanaians such global admiration. If a Canadian half way round the world has this stellar image of Alex Kwapong, how much more so must he be honored by those fortunate enough to have had the opportunity to benefit from his contribution at Cambridge, in Canada, in Tokyo and thus around the world. So Prof is indeed a great Ghanaian - a classics scholar who himself became himself a classic man; an educator who turned knowledge into wisdom; a rare leader of goodwill who became a statesman of beneficent influence; a man and a friend who has inspired thousands to emulate those many qualities that leave us all so grateful for the blessings of his life.