UPDATE: A Service of Remembrance for the late Charles Adams will be held on Tuesday Aug 6th 2013 at 3pm at Elmslie Memorial United Church, Harbour Drive, George Town.

It is with the deepest sympathy we announce the death of Charles Adams who died at 1am on Thursday (1) morning.

Mr. Adams was one of the stalwarts of Cayman’s law practitioners

The following is taken from the Cayman Islands Government website on the announcement of his award of the OBE.

OBE Recipient Extraordinaire

A man of stellar accomplishments accumulated over 40 years’ service in the Cayman Islands and still a practising attorney, this year’s recipient of the OBE (Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire), Mr. Colin Charles Adams, packs a lot of punch, determination and pioneering work behind the quietly dignified exterior and gentle demeanour.

Born on 11 June 1921, in Melbourne, Australia, neither age nor a diagnosis of Parkinson’s disease from a few years ago has dimmed his razor-sharp intellect or his wish to take up cudgels on behalf of the proverbial underdog. He continues to offer sizeable portions of his legal expertise and advice without charge, especially to needy elderly Caymanians in property matters.

However, his role as an attorney at law is only part of the picture. Mr. Adams has worn a number of different hats in his service to the Cayman community, many outside of the practice of law. This includes legal education, drafting of laws, veterans’ affairs, planning matters, banking and finance, and Caymanian heritage and culture.

He arrived in the Cayman Islands by way of Nigeria, Kenya, and Jamaica in 1966 as the Manager of the Bank of Nova Scotia Trust Company (Cayman) Limited, establishing this first trust company in Cayman. He then moved on to become the Chief Executive and General Counsel in Cayman for the Caribbean Bank and Chief Executive of the Crown Continental Merchant Bank (Jamaica) Ltd. Among his entrepreneurial ventures was the establishment in 1972 of the Jacques Scott Group Ltd, distributors of wines, spirits, beer and food products. The company now employs 68 Caymanians, out of a total of 85 employees.

In 1976, he opened his own law firm, Charles Adams and Co., and from 1991 to 1994 was the Senior Partner of Charles Adams, Ritchie & Duckworth.

He served as the President of the CI Law Society from 1979 to 1984, and was a founding member of the Legal Advisory Council in Cayman, where he was involved from 1980 to 84. He was also appointed to serve as magistrate, a role he carried out on different occasions, from 1982 to 1999, and a Justice of the Peace, from 1987.

A matter of great personal satisfaction to him is the key role he played in establishing the Cayman Islands Law School, thereby ensuring Caymanians had increased opportunities to becoming lawyers and benefiting from Cayman’s financial boom. He facilitated the selection and appointment of the school’s first Director, Prof. Peter Rowe.

As an authority on the Development and Planning Laws of the Cayman Islands, he has helped draft laws as well as represented many individuals and local associations for token or no fees because he sympathised with their cause and that they could not afford the entire cost of legal representation.

Preserving Caymanian heritage is a matter dear to his heart and he has championed the cause against the backdrop of the rapid development of the Islands. He is the founding Chairman of the Cayman Islands National Museum and was instrumental in drafting the Museum Law (1979). He has donated his time, knowledge and property to the National Trust, including Heritage Beach in East End and his involvement in the Booby Pond Nature Reserve in Little Cayman. He has been instrumental in saving several old, traditional Caymanian homes from demolition by organising their removal to other locations.

Cayman’s maritime heritage also received a major boost, thanks to the efforts of Mr. Adams. He played a primary part in the conducting of a survey of wrecks in Cayman waters by the Institute of Nautical Archaeology, Texas. He was Chairman of the Goldfield Foundation, set up to bring back to Cayman an original Caymanian turtling schooner The Goldfield, discovered in Seattle, USA. The ship was dismasted in the Pacific and the hull was returned to Cayman in 1986; it subsequently sank in the North Sound. Mr. Adams is currently preserving some of its fittings and commissioning works to be displayed at the site of the original harbour-front offices of Mr. William Conwell Walter, for whom the ship was built in 1930.

Mr. Adams was not only involved with the formation of the Cayman Islands Veterans’ Association in 1979 but continues to serve as its Honorary Secretary, a position he has held from 1984. He remains actively involved in the Association’s activities, making a notable contribution to securing from Government more adequate and affordable health insurance coverage for members.

Such distinguished service evolved from many years of education and experience, Mr. Adams having already achieved and experienced much in different places in the world prior to setting foot in Cayman. He was in the Colonial Service as Federal Administrator General in Lagos, Nigeria, and served as a corporate lawyer in Kenya. Qualifying as a lawyer from King’s College in Durham University, he was admitted as a Solicitor in the Supreme Court of England and Wales. He practised as a Solicitor in a general family practice in Gateshead-on-Tyne, and in Nigeria.

However, like many other accomplished persons, his trajectory towards what now appears a solid path to law was not entirely achieved without the proverbial fork in the road. Following a sound secondary education in England, the accounting career he embarked upon at 16 was interrupted by service in World War II. He is proud of his service in the British Army, seeing action in the Royal Tank Regiment, the Intelligence Corps and Infantry in the Middle East as well as Europe. “We were the lucky ones,” he says, reflecting on the casualties of the war. Even now, he cannot hear the Last Post without his eyes welling up. He could write a book, he reflects, just about his war experiences and memories.

Believing as he does in strong family bonds, he and his wife Sue share constant companionship, both at office and home. Both have three children each from their previous marriages.

Of his award, Mr. Adams says he is much honoured and adds: “I was surprised. I didn’t expect it.”

END

Funeral arrangements for the late Charles Adams will be announced later.