The force behind hockey pitch (1)

By Kwasi Okoh

Now that the dust has settled, after the debacle following the first year anniversary of the passing away of our dear President, His Excellency Professor Evans Atta Mills, and following the finality of the Supreme Court ruling on the 2012 Presidential Elections, I believe it is now the right time to do what a lot of people asked me to do when the debacle was happening.

The main request from many people has been that the recent happenings on the naming of the hockey pitch in Accra occurred only because the history was not well known and not generally available to the public.

My mother, Mrs Theodosia Salome Okoh, was known to most Ghanaians principally because of her being the designer of the Ghana flag.

Many were, however, unaware of her connection to the game of hockey in Ghana.

Indeed, she had been involved with the game for many years; first as a player for a hobby and then as an administrator in the interest of strongly promoting the game in Ghana.

It was during this time that the now much-talked about Hockey Pitch in Accra came to be built.

The pitch was built through the sweat and toil of the then Hockey Association that she led.

The association had to comb the country seeking donations and indeed used a lot of their own money to get the pitch built.

The cost of any construction is usually counted in the cost of the design, bricks and mortar. But the real cost, the sacrifice, is often forgotten.

That cost is cost in anguish, in travelling and transport, in the lack of food and sustenance while sitting outside the office of a possible donor for hours, in the ignominy of ‘begging’ and being refused, in being considered a nuisance, and above all being given the cold shoulder by officialdom who ought to be helping but are more focused on more lucrative projects or are simply not interested in any sport other than football.

I know the feeling, having been involved with promoting some ‘minor’ sports myself.

I was in the forefront of the Ghana Squash Racquets Association and the Ghana Chess Federation, both games that I played and sought to strongly promote some years ago.

So how to tell the story so that history will be served, I have chosen to use my mother’s own words, from her autobiography written in 2002 and updated in 2012.

Chapter 6 of her book includes a portion headed the ‘Hubbub of Life’ which describes her work in the hockey arena. I believe this does justice to the objective of providing the required history lesson. It is so that the general public may know that there are public minded people other than politicians.

Many of them remain firmly on the background, are unsung (many do not want the public attention), are unrewarded (many do not want any rewards), and largely ignored even by those people who ought to know.

But now that the hockey pitch debacle has come up, complete with a Presidential apology, we must begin to provide our histories. That is why I have extracted these excerpts for public consumption.

Autobiography
Synopsis

Mrs Theodosia Salome Abena Kumea Okoh, néé Asihene, was born at Wenchi on Tuesday, June 13, 1922.

She is a renowned artist having exhibited her art pieces in various parts of the world.

She has worked in many mediums. She has produced sketches and paintings in water colour, paintings in oil colour, and created many collages of feathers, and corn stalk, some of which have been hung in several homes and galleries all over the world.

She is best known in the art world for her design of the Ghana National Flag at Independence in 1957, a design which spawned off the flags of many African countries as they also became independent of colonial rule thereafter.

In the sports world, she is best known for her role as Chairman of the Ghana Hockey Association in its hectic formation years, during which time the national hockey pitch, now a modern Field Hockey Stadium, was acquired and built up. She has been a patron of the Ghana Sports Writers Association of Ghana (SWAG).

She comes from a Presbyterian household background. Her father, the Very Reverend E. V Asihene, was the first Black Moderator of the Presbyterian Church of Ghana. She comes from a large family of largely successful and famous siblings. She has also been a teacher, a horticulturist, and a housewife with three children and many grandchildren.

She has had the privilege of travelling around a lot  with her father and abroad with her husband, the late Mr Enoch K Okoh, who until the coup of 1966, was Secretary to the Cabinet and Head of the Civil Service in Ghana.

Excerpts from Chapter 6 of ‘MY STORY’, the autobiography of Mrs Okoh

Ghana hockey

My husband and I both loved the game of hockey. When Enoch returned to Ghana in the mid 1940’s after studying in Cambridge, he, some of his old mates from Achimota and other friends who had also studied in Britain decided to form a Gold Coast Hockey Association.

Some of those original members included Dr Evans Anfom, Kofi Atiemo, Kwasi Appiah and Mr Wartemburg.

They formed local teams, which played each other and eventually had regular annual matches against Nigeria's hockey team.

Every other year when the Nigerians came for the games, they would be put up in the homes of the Gold Coast team members. In the first year of our marriage the Nigerians came for a match and four players stayed with us in our home.

After the country became a republic, the President decided to promote sports as a way to foster good relations and co-operation between Ghana and other nations.

The writer is the oldest son of Theodosia Okoh

• To be continued

Graphic Sports/graphic.com.gh/Ghana