Cora Grant-James, Cert. Hon.

A proud resident from birth of West Bay, Mrs Cora Grant-James plays an active part in district life.

Mrs Grant-James’ work in her community begins at the John Gray Memorial Church in West Bay, which she attends.

During the Christmas season, she helps church organisers to distribute home cooked meals to the elderly and the less fortunate in the community.  She also supports the annual West Bay Senior Citizen Christmas Party which is attended by hundreds of older persons.  For Mrs Grant-James these are the two most rewarding occasions of the festive season.

In addition to her work in the community, Mrs Grant-James also takes on roles with a more civic focus. In 2012 she became Vice Chair of the West Bay District Advisory Council, which was created under the new constitution. She is also currently a member of the Immigration Business Staffing Plan Board, and the Save the Mortgage Program. Since its creation by Government in 2011, this last initiative has been credited with helping some 200 Caymanians save their homes from foreclosure.

Also in 2005, in the aftermath of hurricane Ivan, she was appointed to the West Bay Hurricane Recovery Committee, whose job it was to assess contractors’ estimates for property repairs and dispense Government funds to carry out said work. In this role she visited the homes of persons whose homes had been the most badly damaged. She remains an active member of the West Bay Emergency Response Team, which played a very important role in providing provisions and assistance to people in the aftermath of Hurricane Ivan.

A past member of the West Bay Heritage Committee, she is also a regular sponsor of the annual West Bay Wave Runner races. This last, she says, is an outcome of her commitment to developing and supporting healthy, fun-filled activities for young people.

Mrs Grant-James has been employed by RBC Royal Bank (Cayman) Ltd., for over thirty years and currently holds the position of Manager Debt Collections. During this time she has helped a number of Caymanians to acquire their homes and to establish small businesses. For her work she has received the Life Time Achievement Award in Banking Services.

She is also actively involved in her employer’s community outreach programmes, including; the RBC Children’s Cancer Fund Walk which raises thousands of dollars locally to assist with the care and treatment of young people diagnosed with cancer, the RBC sponsored Red Cross Golf Tournament, and the National Spelling Bee Competition.

Her extensive banking background has also led to her appointments as a Director of the Agricultural & Industrial Development Bank, and later as Director/Deputy Chair of the Cayman Islands Development Bank. While she no longer serves on the Board she maintains good relationships with the bank and its staff.

Commenting that both her mother and brother have received the Cayman Islands Certificate and Badge of Honour, she states: “This makes the award even more special and meaningful to me. I live my life by the Biblical principle, that “to whom much is given, much is required”, and if God does not bless me anymore than he already has, then I consider myself to have already been blessed enough.”

Claire Range Cert. Hon.

Dedicated work in the prison service; a genuine commitment to improving the lives of inmates; and active participation in the wider community have earned Mrs. Claire Range the Cayman Islands Certificate and Badge of Honour award.

The product of unerring natural and professional instincts, Mrs. Range’s wholehearted belief in the importance of inmate rehabilitation development is central to her role as Director of Her Majesty’s Prison Fairbanks (for females); and the Eagle House institution (which caters to young offenders).

During the 1980s Mrs. Range served on the front-lines of the burgeoning tourism industry. After eight years she took the decision to build on her interest in law enforcement and joined the staff of the newly-built prison in 1981.

The immediate challenges of the new setting included helping to prepare the cells, offices and kitchen for occupancy. Eighteen prisoners comprised the first batch of inmates.

Since that time a genuine concern for inmates’ rehabilitation, as well as for their family members, have guided her professional – and personal – decisions.

“People need people,” she states succinctly.

Accordingly a key tool that she applies in her work is the concept of dynamic security. She explained that this means a focus on interaction, observation and verbal contact as key tools, as well as the application of appropriate rewards or punishments in response to the inmate’s behaviour.

While she initially joined the prison service for a three-year stint, that was extended first by years, and then by decades. In that time she has committed a tremendous amount of her professional and personal energy to her career. This has extended to her attendance at numerous overseas training sessions. The outcome of this is that over the years she has become a role model to many in uniform.

Mrs Range was especially instrumental in the post-riot restoration of the service in 1999, when she took over as Acting Deputy Director. She was promoted to a Deputy Director of the Prison Service two years later, and became the Eagle House Director in 2004. In September 2012 she added the Fairbanks directorship to her duties.

This May she will reach 32 years’ service, but has no intentions of slowing down. In fact, she hopes to continue mentoring the next generation of security workers.

“I’d love to see more Caymanians enter the service. Given responsibilities and guidance, they can develop meaningful careers,” she says. She adds that, while mentoring and security are key, officers must also learn the personality of each prisoner; empathise with their situation; and be aware of the status of their families.

While the number of female inmates has remained relatively low, she says a more significant present focus is on how to cater to the young offenders of Eagle House, especially in light of a constitutionally-mandated separation of those facilities from the adult compound this year.

The Deputy Director describes the phenomenon of young career-criminals as a “nightmare”. Especially so, since she has seen juveniles and young offenders get trapped in the “revolving door” and return  often – well into their adult years.

So too, has been the trend of generational criminality with several instances of parents and their children being incarcerated together.

Even so, the many youths and adults who serve their time and become reformed, productive members of society are her personal triumph, she says. “However, we never hear much about those good people,” she notes.

Out of uniform, her full life is filled with rewarding pursuits, including: church, singing, cooking and time with Elsmer, her husband of 24 years, their five children – and especially their four grandchildren.

She credits her community-minded nature to her late mother, Laura Andreson.  As a child, her main chores included delivering her mother’s meals to shut-ins, as well as cleaning for and otherwise assisting those who needed help.

“Ms Fix-it” is how her kids still label her. “While I can’t fix the world, I can, and will, do my part,” says Mrs. Range.

Characteristically offering encouragement for those facing difficult decisions and hard decision, she advises, “Take heart, be patient and look for help if needed; for someone, somewhere, sees something good in you that you may not be aware of.”

John Doak Cert. Hon

“Quick. Name a Cayman architect.” Fire this question at just about anyone in the Cayman Islands and, chances are, the response you get is, “John Doak”.

Of course, Cayman boasts some very accomplished architects, but Doak’s list of professional achievements supports the description.

Coming from a family of artists, John was introduced me to the arts and architecture from an early age. After almost 7 years of studies in his hometown Glasglow, Scotland and eager to get his feet wet, Doak received a call from Scottish architect John McCulloch – who recognized his surname. After a phone interview, McCulloch offered him a position to work in his Cayman Islands office. What Scotsman is going to turn down the chance to live and work in the sunny tropics?

Fresh out of the Mackintosh School of Architecture, University of Glasgow, Doak arrived to Grand Cayman in 1979 as a result of one phone interview. Here he joined Onions, Bouchard McCulloch (OBM) where he started as a junior architect. Doak’s creative energy quickly ignited the regional firm on the cusp of a major development boom that ran for two decades.

His first completed building was a development for British American Insurance and housed First Home Bank, located on Jennet Street in George Town, opened in 1981. The strong development market of the 80s and 90s gave Doak full reign to his architectural skills and he found himself designing many of Cayman’s most notable buildings to date. Among them are the Harquail Theatre, Cayman National Bank (elgin Avenue branch), UBS House, Genesis, Flagship Building, Port Authority, Margaritaville, Ugland House, Strathvale House and Coutts.

John was also architect for the renovations of Pedro St James Castle and the Visitor Centre as well as for the Old Courts House (now the National Museum) which received a Caribbean Preservation Award in 1990.

Working with OBM also allowed him to design for clients across the Caribbean, including in the Turks & Caicos Islands, Bermuda, St Kitts, Antigua, Dominican Republic and Cuba.

John Doak, however, recognized the uniqueness of Cayman’s smaller and simpler buildings and thus began a life-long effort to describe, record and preserve what remained of them.

In 2001 he started his own company John Doak Architecture in collaboration with his associate John Yeo. Since then, with projects range from resort, commercial and residential, the firm has produced an extraordinary body of award winning work and international recognition for their resort and commercial projects in Cayman and across the Caribbean. One that stands out, the “Seagrape House” received the Governor’s Award for Design and Construction Excellence in 2011.

A combination of innate understanding, client aspirations, unique accommodations and site that is tropically spiced creatively concocts Doak’s own style. A quote by architect Charles Moore, Doak inspired his approach to design in the Caribbean.

“If architects are to do useful work on this planet then surely their proper concern must be the creation of place – the ordered imposition of man’s self on specific locations across the face of the earth. To make a place is to make a domain that helps people know where they are and by extension know who they are.”

John is a loving husband to Jackie. Together, the couple has four children, Jonathan (32) and daughter Jaime (28), Cameron Claire (10) and son (8).  He is also a founding member of the National Trust, the National Gallery, the National Museum and also the National Cultural Foundation. He continues to support those organizations and participates at Board or Committee level and as a consultant.

The years have by no means slowed him down. Today, Doak is as prolific as ever. Defying the recent economic downturn, John Doak Architecture has numerous major commissions on the drawing board which seem to attract clients who want challenging, original architecture.

As a primary focus, he intends to publish a personal project known as “Cayman Style” which in its simplest description is a development history of the Cayman Islands.

Otherwise, he will continue to enjoy his labour of love and appreciation for the Cayman Islands including his collection of manuscripts, drawings, sketches and photos undertaken over the last 30 years whilst exploring new techniques to meet the changing lifestyles of those who live or visit these wonderful islands.

Owen Murphy Farrington, Cert. Hon.

Asked for his response to the news that he had received the Cayman Islands Certificate and Badge of Honour, Owen Farrington says: “I am humbled by this award and thankful to God for helping me to assist the underprivileged in our community”.

His career as a seaman and an advocate for seamen is characterized by just this kind of unassuming humility but also by tireless diligence.

Mr. Farrington was born in the district of West Bay on August 18^th 1932. Many in the Cayman Islands may remember that as the year of “the great storm” but it is also the year that the country gained an inexhaustible human resource.

Working as a seaman for 26 years was just the beginning of Mr. Farrington’s history of care for his fellow man.

During one of his many turtling voyages, in the 1960’s when he captained his own schooner, he received a call from a fellow seaman who reported that a group of shark fishermen had run out of drinking water after they were taken to Hobbies Cays, Honduras by another Caymanian schooner. Mr. Farrington detoured from his route, rescued the men and returned to Grand Cayman to deliver them home.

Following his return to the shores of the Cayman Islands, Mr Farrington became a well-known advocate for seafarers and their families.

As president of the Cayman Islands Seafarers’ Association from 2001 to 2003, he famously took up the cause of widows of Caymanian seamen.

Approached by some of the women in regards to benefits they had hoped to receive through their deceased spouses, Mr Farrington put the matter to the Association board. It unanimously passed a motion to allow widows of Caymanian seamen to become members of the Association in their own right. This motion became known as the Widows Motion.

This willingness to go above and beyond for his fellow man and for his community is what makes Mr Farrington exceptional, and a true inspiration to all those around him.