Jamie Stoute was just eleven years old, and a Common Entrance student of Bishop Anstey Junior School, in 1989, when he sat for three days in front of the school located at Ariapita Road in St Ann's, and completed a pencil drawing of the building for entry into an art competition organised by the school.
The illustration of the old building which was once the thriving "Monte Cristo" cocoa estate won the first prize for young Jamie, the only child of Junior and Delisa Stoute of Breezy Hill, Cascade.
No one was more surprised than his mother who arrived to pick him up one afternoon and was told by the guard "so your son won." "Won what was my reply, Jamie never even told me a word about the entry" says Delisa.
"Don't you know there was a competition here to draw the school" asked the guard.
A very proud Delisa went into the office and saw Jamie's winning drawing.
Little did Jamie realise that his picture would be reproduced time and again on everything that concerns the private kindergarten up to last week's bookmark given as a memento at the school's Sports Day 2000. Last year, the principal invited Jamie to the hanging of the picture in the school hall. It had been blown up and framed from the original which is in his mother's possession to this day.
Now a third year student at the Rochester Institute of Technology, in New York, where the 22 year old is working towards a Bachelor of Science Degree in Information Technology, Jamie's mother says "he still draws non-stop, and even has created a website for his drawings." His work is no longer architectural like the one that has brought him junior school fame, but explains Delisa "he creates his own characters, gives them what he calls a profile, with name and birth place. They are more futuristic looking drawings of muscular men and women, not normal people at all."
Neither for his O or A levels at Fatima College did Jamie choose to do art as a subject, and his mother believes that if in the future he has to do art in a formal way, his interest is in drawing characters for the nintendo: "Maybe one day yet he will go that route." In the meantime his drawings and personal critiques on all the nintendo games can be found on his website at http://members.xoom.com//ShinUltima
On the subject of the Sports Day which prompted my story on Jamie, for the first time the junior school chose to hold this annual event on a Saturday and on Queen's Royal College Grounds. Said the school's new principal, Dr Patricia Dardaine-Ragguet, who is herself a former pupil of both the junior and secondary schools, and holds a doctorate in music: "We decided to try a Saturday morning as in the past parents have had to come for short intervals and return to their jobs."
This obviously proved to be the way to go in future, as parents were at the grounds in their numbers from the 8 a.m. March Past of the four houses named after former headmistresses: Monica Eardley-Wilmot (1959-1965), Mona K. Georges (1966-1972); Jennifer Als (1972- 1981) and Marva Prada (1981-1988), through the Lower School events of Kindergarten, Prep and Form 1, and to the final Upper School events later in the day. The other two Bishop Anstey Junior headmistresses were Joyce Kirton and Glenda Charles-Harris.