In this tribute, Adewale Adeeyo writes on a worthy humanist and physician Dr Charles Oladeinde Williams who clocked 80 years.
Listen to counsel and accept discipline,
that you may be wise the rest of your days
– Proverbs 19:20
In all ways and at all times, our lives persist as if it were a leaf meandering upon a bottomless and capricious lake. We are all rolling stones drifting from high up the mountain top to unknown roads that rupture into furtive directions which blend the menacing challenges of our living with the wondrous realities that forge our daily experiences into our very eccentric world.All of life is pure perplexity, and nothing is sure except that which God gives. The most extraordinary sensation in life is our connection to the immensity of the powers of Almighty God. The wisdom and caution that manage human spirituality is vast and endless. And so baffling is the awesomeness of God’s goodness that we may never be able to comprehend nor understand Him. God is beyond us all and it is needless to even try to understand Him. What we need do, and must always do, is to never shift from Him, and ever praise Him. God is beyond compare! We must heed all His laws especially His significant counsel that declared that “whoever is strong must lend help to, and take care of the weak”. I ask, are you doing this? If not, start now!
The Holy Bible invaluably interpreted the realities of life to us when it thus cautioned, “Test all things, hold fast what is good” (1 Thessalonians 5:21). This profound exhortation forever intrigues me. For real, human history and religion would have been erased without trace if faith had not established itself as the pre-eminent controlling forcethat connect our mystifying motions through life to the beauty of meaningful spiritual composure that wrought the flawless human march to blissful salvation.
If we wish to purposely travel through life, we must embrace unshakeable faith and be insatiably pre-occupied and absorbed by our spiritual convictions. We must permit faith to occupy its deserved space in our lives so that we may acquire a comforting immunity from the despairing calamities that decimate human hope and confidence. None can live without faith. And we must not even contemplate such a sad and ruinous eventuality.
Our lives can only begin to feel important, delightful and meaningful when it is ensconced in faiththat forever arouse our praise and honour for Almighty God. The immensity of God’s powers are immeasurable, mysterious, and boundless.We thus must strive ceaselessly and relentlessly to help one another. It is the law of God. Every person of faith that abides by this rule has everything at his fingertips and the contours of his life is cemented to the abundance of God’s loveand His perpetual favours.
Our journey of life is daunting, fearful and convoluted. Just as no person can step into the river and retrieve dry feet, so it is that no one can travel through life without faith and claim victory. Only the graces of God and His compassion can assuredly deliver triumph.
As we trudge on through life’s mystic trek, we are co-travelers. But we also are in real and sensible terms, adversaries and competitors for myriad material blessings of the world. It is simply impossible to attain triumph without real and cherished faith. Whoever lacks faith has brutally diminished the chances to attain his goals in the way he had hoped for, and his whole life is immersed in great burden.
As we seek God’s mercy and grace, so must it be a spiritual compulsion that wemust do good always. This is what givesGod the greatest pleasure. It is also what begets God’s ordained favours. Those who ignore doing goodoften confront savage disappointments in life. Those who have capacity to do good but fail to do so earn as reward a harsh life of depressing humiliation.
Daily, in as long as we tread upon the soil of the earth, God alone is He who both sustain and enliven us as we endure the beauty as well as the unrests of this vain and dangerous world. None is a solitary wanderer. It is thus the spiritual mystery attached to the enigma of our living that caused my life to collide with that of our brother, big brother, uncle, father, grandfather and worthy humanist, Dr. Charles Oladeinde Williams, who wondrously stepped into the grand old age of 80 today.
No matter how we measure it, 80 is by far a very advanced age.We thank God for the life of our good doctor.Most times, old age make human beings succumb to a vast array of geriatric aliments that quickly decimate, and even terminate lives. All of human affairs are pretty much set on a wheel, and as the wheel turns around, it does not permit the same people who are already on deck to always prosper, nor even survive. Life is a great feast of nothingness and those who attain 80 must possess exceptional blessings of God. Whoever is 80 must also have done a great deal of good and virtuous deeds in the enduring sojourn that brought him to a magisterial and commanding point of God’s good fortune that lent him longevity that was, all along, preserved by sound wellness.
Both parents of Dr.DeindeWillaims never attained 80. Neither has anyone in his immediate nuclear family lived up to 80. It is the benevolence of God that gifted this uncanny and prestigious history of conquest to his beloved son, Dr.Deinde Williams.
Also, being a medical doctor has nothing to do with how long the personal life of an individual shall endure the brutalities of our risky life adventures. No matter how lavishly our lives may be appointed, dying or living is a transcendental matter that is strictly ordained by God who loves equally those who die young as well as those who die in the distressing twilight of their lives
To understand life as clearly as I could, I always rely on the scriptures of our two great religions, Christianity and Islam. It is from Islam that is now so unimaginably demonised by faithless extremists and cruel jihadists that I would take wisdom to speak to our conversation of today.
An irrefutable Islamic argument propounds that our two big religions are decorous and often enrich one another. God listens and agrees with all manner of prayers without a moment hesitation.It is bigotry, alone and by itself, that is always tormenting human souls. I implore you, kindly hear this Islamic adage:”others fear what tomorrow may bring, but I am afraid of what happened yesterday”.
All the feuds that ever descended upon the earth, and enforced great calamities could directly be traced to needless but fierce arguments that occurred yesterday. The yesterday of life is gone forever. But it still is the hardest to deal with because people hardly forgive and certainly never forget, and thus petty issues of yesterday combust into fiery wars that decimate our collective joy and entomb our future bliss.
On the Day of Judgment, it is our deeds of yesterday that would matter. The query is not about tomorrow. There is no tomorrow nor indeed a future in heaven.There is only everlasting bliss. The angels have no business with your tomorrow.Yesterday is the platform that releases the measurements of all your past deeds for appraisal and approbation. There is no other way by which the promised mission of our excursion in this world could be accomplished if we do not, appropriately and ceaselessly, do good to whomever we may encounter in our life’s journey
I have much ruminated on what it was exactly that glued together the mentorship and friendship that has existed for 41 happy years between my person and the great man who we are celebrating today at 80, Dr. Charles Oladeinde Williams. This dignified and brilliant physician has countless titles.But I shall refer to him strictly by his loftiest and pre-eminent title, MD, meaning, Doctor of Medicine. This is a substantial and indisputable cerebral attainment that is distinct from some others that mainly harvest vanity and perhaps worthless comedy.
New York City is the most internationalist town in the whole wide world. Those who love her fondly serenade her as the Big Apple. Some others give her vitality and eminence by calling her the City that never sleeps. And those who are immersed in her sophisticated global elegance and ritzy culture refer to her as a “City so bad( meaning fabulous), that she has to be named twice; “New York, New York.”
New York has the uncanny capacity to reduce to utter smallness and the utmost paltry status whomever came into town because the Big Apple gleams high up into the distant skies and her massive buildings erected into the earth always seem to frighten the senses. Dubai may demonstrate obscene wealth and powerfully modern architectural structures that are embellished in sinfullopulent affluence, there never would be another New York. This was the hot spot in which I first encountered Dr. Charles Oladeinde Williams in my life in the summer of 1975. I had been in and around the city for several years and indeedalready earned my first degree, and was about finishing my Master’s degree when our lives collided on the streets of Manhattan.
It is easy to quickly have the fantasy that each of us would journey to faraway places, and to the farthest ends of the weird earth that is our real world. But none knows his destination nor his real brother or his sister, nor even whowill be a forever or impermanent spouse. We are nested in the shade of the unknown and scattered around the world. Even if we use the same compass, we simply are trekking in different directions at all timesbut we won’t ever know for sure where the stern world would toss us. The person with whom you would share the truest kindred spirits may not be that person who latterly sucked milk off your mother’s breast and passed her nipples to you.
Life is a sunny fire, and fire is a real wild beast which can devour everything in motion. God alone is the master planner, and His plans never fail. In real life, fantasy is often mixed with facts. But life ever remains weakly illuminated because life is often obstinate and relentlessly cruel. But it is still these mystic motions of our living that lend to me the immense joy to make the claim that Dr. Charles Oladeinde Williams has been, these past 41 years, my big brother who my mother never had.
No one ever introduced him to me nor me to him. I ran right smack into his person on Lexington Avenue, New York. I have never sighted him in my life nor know a thing about his person. A collusion of fates weaved the motions of our lives into compatible rhythm on that beautiful summer day of 1975. I emerged from the underground train to the main streets of Lexington Avenue and casually encountered a black dude who was smartly dressed in a very handsome but curious Safari suit. I was in the diplomatic enclave of Manhattan and thus intelligibly presumed him to be a Franco-phone diplomat.
My mood was as sunny and effusive as the purity and beauty of that summer day and I thus directed my cheerfulness to the “African diplomat” saying, in my then ebullient American accent, “Brother, what’s goingon this pretty day?”The “African diplomat”, I guessed, considered my inquisitorial greeting intrusive. He politely responded in his thick African accent saying, “I am fine.” We both faced the same direction and varnished into the powerful human traffic of New York. We trucked on at about the same pace, andwe seemed to desire to walk in uniform swagger without losing each other. Remember, my co-traveler on that day was 41 years younger than he is today. He moved sprightly, and with a steady gait. Our simultaneous motions blended into a flawless choreography. We spoke no more to one another, and suddenly we slowed down in unison, and veered into the same building housing the Consulate of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.
I was ahead of him and was the first to step into the building but he was processed ahead of me because I yielded to him the respect that his dignified personappropriated. He said a swift thank you, and went off on the elevator. My contact at the consulate was an urbane and affable diplomat, Mr.Laoye, who was an Ibadan indigene and friend of my elder brother. By the time I was eased into Mr.Laoye’s office, I encountered him intensely engaged in a delightful banter with the mysterious “Franco-phone diplomat”, and in the finest Yoruba language. The man in the Safari suit and I seemed both interred in the total recall of our uncanny 15 minutes walk on the sidewalk of New York City. Our encounter on Lexington Avenue and the weird coincidence of our meeting in the office of a mutual kinsman liberated the unfamiliar reality of human imagination that adapts itself to the fusion of genuine gladness with deep telepathic brotherhood. Instantly, conviviality established itself whilst Mr Laoye used his diplomatic instincts to measure our body language and then spoke loudly, “I guess you guys know each other.” In unison, we instinctively said, “Yes”. It was a unique and irreplaceable moment that infected both of us with pervasive extraordinary affinity that sprouted friendship that has lasted forever.
Quickly, we all got talking. Dr Williams was a much older person than I was but he was genteel, sophisticated, confident and self-assured. He was a Lagos-based physician but I deduced from the lyrics and words that weaved the tapestry of his life that he was a very diligent doctor with a nose for brilliant business ideas and an active social life. He asked what it was that I was doing in America. I told him that I had obtained my first degree and was about to finish my master degree program. He was happy with me for facing my studies and admonished me to come home, without any delay, once I was done with my education in America. Dr. Williams told beguiling and compelling stories of the robust social life and enormous wealth circulating in Nigeria amidst the military class in particular plus a great body of the educated elites and business men who diligently struggled and always tried harder. He then offered to me his business card and encouraged me to make contact with him anytime I returned home to Nigeria.
That was the end of my quixotic meeting with Dr. Williams. For the next several years, I would never meet nor hear from the doctor. During the Christmas holiday seasons, I would send him greeting cards, and I believe that I wrote letters to him two or three times.Dr. Williams never acknowledged nor responded to my courteous signals.
After a long sojourn in America, I came home on holiday for the first time in the summer of 1976. I made contact with Dr. Williams and was bemused by the elements that produced the fabulous delight that he expressed upon sighting my person. The manner by which he said “Wale” was as familiar and exceptional as if he called me yesterday and perhaps everyday of the past few years.
Every human being has his own particular wit for identifying and interpreting reality which most often instinctively superimposes upon every set of fresh circumstances. I could not detect misleading signs that could expose to me anything different from the assured genuineness that I had sensed in the doctor’s humane capacity in New York way back in time, and that made me readily believe in his fondness for my person.
He was very kind and attentive, and he invited me to come stay with him. I did not decline his offer but deflected the invitation. I took pity on myself for my action because there was no pride attached to my conduct except that I hurriedly absconded to America.
I have had a luminous sense of the mystical spectacle that Nigeria was and the euphoria elicits my delirious attraction to her peculiar enigma. The appearance of unseriousnessin all matters and thelopsidedness of our governmental apparatus would never deter my reappearance on the soil of my ancestors. I certainly would return home, and soonest
In 1978, at a ritzy New York hotel, I sat before a passionate and enthusiastic pack of executives of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) for a job placement. The body language of both sides was fabulous, and I had me a good time. I was hardly surprised when the NNPC offered me employment with the extraordinary notice that I have a dedicated one-year term to pick up the serious offer. My father was 90 years old and prodding me to come home. My mother was not by far younger than my dad, and she was even more emphatic and vigorous on the necessity for my return to Nigeria. I loved America and was having a grand time. But I have also aligned the good life of America to her inherent social imbalance and pervasive uncertaintiesplus the harrowingambiguity of solemn but ever present discrimination.
The absolute worst could happen in America at any moment, and in any place. There is anarchy inspite of her vast orderliness. The great promise offered me by America was untrustworthy but I was already ensnared by the seductive affluence of American big living. Still, I sensed that my future may be impaired by America’s unstable grounds and corporate gangsterism, her expanding social atrophy and perhaps my deep concern for my personal circumstance of a punishing and lonely future in a magnificent but empty and callous space in far away America.I sensibly opted to return to my homeland.
I finally returned to Nigeria in the summertime of 1978with enthusiasm and composed ambition. My good education endowed me with vast awareness, understanding and ample readiness to go through life with firm confidence. Within days, I visited the corporate headquarters of the NNPC, Falomo, Ikoyi, Lagos. The building itself lacked dignity and the ergonomics of the interior was scruffy and uninspiring. I would visit this building, daily, for the next several days, and with all my zeal and haste, I went in there for a tormenting 3 weeks justbecause the job offered to me in New York has indeed vanished. The personnel Department never doubted the letter I tendered to them. But it was unableto reconcile her books to reflect my appointment.
Suddenly, everything connected to my return home became stale, impolite, disorderly and twisted, and thesesdespairing factors concretely compressed into a mystical fallacy. The soil of the earth beneath my feet was fast sinking and reality itself receded to the floor of the Atlanticocean that encircled Lagos. Above all, the skies sneers and scoffs at my ignorance of the contemporary sociology of life in my own country.
The awkward bureaucracy at NNPC presented to me the most impenetrable barrier ever in my life. I was stressed to the limit and was feeling great exhaustion when in a humble and pleading tone, I enchanted a young female officer to take me to the file room where I hoped to find the missing link to my employment status. Once at the file room, there was no way that any dutiful movement forward could be accomplished. Heavy powders of dust lend laborious rhythm to the confusion and chaos in the room. Bundles of files rose high up to the ceiling and numerous more massively serpentines into infinity, each disappearing somewhere beyond mountains and forests of dust.
By now, my exhaustion had translated to immeasurable frustration and I cannot anymore remember which maddening argument that I raised which so impressed one officer that he inexplicably issued to me a transaction document that empowered me with the right of residence at the fancy Ikoyi Hotel for 2 weeks only.
Everything was impossible and unreal about my situation in Lagos. I needed to think fast, and act quickly. I had always known that a man who is proud and boastful is gloom dispersed in a pierced pot. I desperately yearned to return to my life of regularity and tranquil peace in America. I also reasoned that this action would not be ingenious and would not be dissimilar from defeat. I decided to make contact with Dr.Deinde Williams, and seek help. I went over to his clinic at Ojuelegba, Surulere, and met Dr. Williams who intently listened to the aching barriers that I encountered in Lagos since my arrival.
The face of Dr. Williams communicates that it is hiding something about which I knew nothing, and never will. He interpreted my words very carefully and said “Wale, you shall not return to America, and “we” shall retrieve your job from the NNPC system.” I still remember the zealous haste, politeness and civility by which this good and gracious man burnished my sanity and restored my humanity. I was stunned by the immensity of his goodness when he offered that I should move to his home. Coming to Dr.Willaims was more than a little bit of good fortune in my life. I probably would not be living in Nigeria today if not for the compassion and mentorship of this person of staggering goodness who, in my own take, is an irreplaceable humanist. His singular effort permitted me to mingle with vast and ample chances in the landscape of our mighty country that may have eluded me.
I can speak up without fear that Dr. Charles Oladeinde Williams is my iconic hero. He not only entranced me to his home but he actually inducted me into his feisty social life and connections that combined to forge his formidable business and personal lifestyles. He personally drove me around to important and high places. I met his buddy and brother,EgbonKunle Williams. A veritable and superbly gifted architect with a hugely successful practice in Lagos. EgbonKunle Williams remains unmistakably the truest Lagosian you could ever meet. But I was seized at once with a profound fascination with his completely absorbing European nature. A good man whose company is always cheerful largely because of his cerebral alertness that helped him to penetrate English culture without detachment from his all-consuming Lagosian identity. He always was, and remains the unknown factor that influenced and aligned my ambition with my real purpose in Nigeria, and thus always lend to me immense brotherly love andrealsolidbalance. Unbeknowest to EgbonKunle, it was him who emboldened me to stand up to, and conquer the perils of social and business developmentschallengesin Nigeria. I remain ever grateful to him for all the courtesies and untiring support.
Dr.Funso Peters who was the principal partner to Dr. Williams at Unity Hospital was the only friend of Doctor that I knew before my association with Dr.Deinde Williams. His Uncle,AlhajiAshamu,lived on Adeeyo Street in Ibadan and four houses apart from my father’s house when he was a medical student at the University of Ibadan, and I was only in High School. He was by far senior to me and I never knew him up close except that I recognized him as Alhaji’s younger brother at the University. We looked at him withup to him with the highest regard great esteem and he was a fabulous role model who propelled my ambition for higher education.
Mr Kunle Cole, now late, showed me love and friendship. He lived at Ibadan and was Governor, University College Hospital (UCH). Upon retirement, he relocated to Lagos and became a closer big brother and dearest friend. When I received Nigeria’s treasured National Honours in 2001, he was the first senior big brother and friend who called at 7am to congratulate me. Am I amat peace with the believe that EgbonKunle Cole is in the firm grip of God’s pleasure in Heaven.
Mr Sunny Jegede, who later became Managing Director of Total Oil Company remains a close associate of Dr. Williams with whom I interfaced. But it was when Doctor drove me to the residence of Mr.Shyllon in Ikoyi that my job placement with NNPC was invigorated with official authority. Mr Shyllon was managing Managing Director of the National Oil Company who wrote me a note to a director of the NNPC, Mr Olaiya, who would ultimately raise a fresh and firm letter of employment for me. I also met with Mr.Wale Ige, who was then a high ranking civil servant with the Nigerian Telecommunications Company (NITEL). The NNPC Director, Mr Olaiya, was his cousin to whom he gave me a letter. Mr Ige would later become a Minister of Communication of the Federal Republic. The combination of letters from Messrs Shyllon and Ige influenced Mr Olaiya to swiftly induce the NNPC system to do the right thing at once so that my previously illusory placement would be accorded a satisfactory status with the order for instant commencement of duty.
In the epic movie, The Godfather, Marlon Brando played the mafia Capone (boss of all bosses) who brought help and comfort to his devotees but misfortune and punishment of painful death upon his rivals and foes, real or imagined. One of his criminal underlings and indeed major enforcer had gone to him for assistance. Before he would agree to lend help, this plainly wicked and blood thirsty gangster who routinely sponsor criminal expeditions to eliminate even his family members asked,”do you have family? The enforcer replied, “Sir, No”. The Capone, a monstrous killer of souls gave a response embedded in the kind of philosophy that could have been authored by Socrates. He rested his head and then raised it with an idiom that remained immutably inscribed in both my mind and memory. Calmly, The Godfather muttered,”a man who ain’t got family is not a real man”.iIt is mystifying that a professional criminal, who perpetually has blood in his hands could interpret life with this kind of cheerful and profound exhortation. It was through these words of The Godfather that I recognized that family is the greatest strength that a man could ever possespossess.
I have eloquently talked about Dr. Williams through the trajectory of my providential meeting with him in New York and my surreal re-union with his person in Lagos, to illustrate how the selflessness of one person can bring comfort and relief to the life of another and how especially we all are but pawns in the hands of destiny, at all times.
Dr Williams is forever fascinated by the science of medicine, and especially its practice. Doctor is an astonishing workaholic who keeps working with a sacrificing spirit. His father was a Pharmacist and he had opted to become a physician because his meekness and love of humanity offered his soul to the profession of medicine. He certainly could not have succeeded as a priest. But he surely could have floweredas a successful politician. So great his is love of medicine that it forever takes his breath away. He drove himself hard practicing medicine and so did he play very hard on the stage of life.
Doctor was a very lovable man who exerted himself very hard at work but even harder whenat play. Women loved him immeasurably, and he loved them back with even greater passion. I met his wife, Kehinde, for the first time when I moved into his household. She was a lovely lady with dark silky skin who worked as a bio-technologist at LUTH, Idi Araba, Lagos.
She was gracefully kind to everyone and would soonest become my truest sister.There never was any oppressive show off about her. She was inimitably meek and humble.At the time we met, she was nursing her son, Seun, who was less than one year old and I thus fondly call her “mummy Seun”. She lovingly doted on her son who today, like his dad, is a medical doctor
“Mummy Seun” strictlyconcerned herself with affection for her husband and her family. By the time Seun was two years old, his mummy was already in the family way and this intrusion ushered Rotimi into the world. Rotimi is a graduate of “Great Ife” and an entrepreneur in Lagos who is married with children. By the way, Seun joyously married a physician like himself.
The phantom fate of life is what hooks us all to what destiny has ordained. Destiny must be fulfilled and none can alter or avoid it, even if it is leads to great conquest or into an abyss. And so it is that human arrangements, no matter how sensible or rational, can easily be undermined by impudent and awry forces that always is greater than the power of material reality. We all just must learn to move on when human impulses, conflicts, feuds and doubts step onto the earthly stage and demolish relationships that once were happy and joyous. There is unremitting torment to marriages that break up but there is always cause for comfort and relief when we suppress our anxiety with faith that sustains courteous and reasonable friendships.
Today, the wife of Dr.Deinde Williams, Olufunke,is my delightfulsister who I fondly call “Grandma”because of her gigantic grace that God put together to forge an idyllic, sensible and humble personality. I am always fascinated by her predictable niceness and prodigious love of her husband. I never have had a feeling of deep self- satisfaction as I experienced these past two years when she, with great pleasure, calm devotion and steady attentiveness, nursed and took care of ourDoctor from the debilitating geriatric aliments that severely disturbed her husband and also tormented her person. Courageously, Grandma embraced faith with robust convictions that conquered these immense challenges. Believe, Grandma, nothing would ever be able to take away your man because you are amazingly strong and secure in God’s love and protection. Grandma has carried on with equanimity and the highest graces of selfless devotion for her husband. You are bound to prevail. I salute the Doctor for his magical restorationand extend to this fabulous couple a beautiful long life of joyous peace.
Dr.Deinde Williams always thrived on sound wellness and God blessed him with prodigious capacity by which he sired many children. I know all his children very well and they have broken away,to far and distant places, all over the world, and are doing very well at the highest top in a vast array of academic pursuits. These graduates include computer technology specialists, a couture designer, management and business administration experts, a medical doctor and even a female pilot, Bukola. These extraordinary blessings are the finest proof of God’s love of this fabulous man to whom he has gifted a good and grand life.
Doctor attracted to his life good and fabulous people. My dear Aunty Bola whom I call “Mmama Lara” remains a dear sister for whom I have the greatest respect. I extend my highest esteem to Bose in the UK and her mother. And the Chicago resident and married mum, LoLaLola, is the first child of Dr Williams.Doctor expressed no resistance to God’s blessings and even snatched my real sister, Funmi Williams, “mummy Mummy Segun”, a woman of undiminishing and self-sufficient energy, poise and character.
Life can be grand and magnificent, depending on who one encounters in our tedious journey of life. We may never fully understand the meaning of irreversible destiny. But we may use the experiences of my personal excursion through life to calibrate the prism of the vast goodness inherent in the person of Dr.Deinde Williams, and thus extrapolate the very essence of the fates that inexorably paired us together as we trudge on for 41 blissful years.
Crime and punishment, injustice and revenge, doing good or evil – one always follows the other, sooner or later. But whomever doesgood has done the will of the Lord and Almighty God shall gift to that person considerable advantage and perpetual victory. How much difficulty lurked therein in life, how many riddles and mysteries surround our existence, we may never know. We just need to be accustomed to the exacting mechanical and spiritual movements of life so that we may realize the computation of rewards that help us to conquer our distinct problems through the goodness and favours that other people extend to us from the overall benevolence of Almighty God.
There ever shall be incessant collisions and innumerable contacts connected to our life’s trek in as long as our sojourn moves through uncanny orbits, and along trajectories that intersect at an infinite point of God’s munificence.
May the angels nudge us allto glorious destinations of God’s mercy and glory. 80 years of living, by all necessary means, is a dramatic ascent. I sense a historic storm brewing, great blessings approaching, and glorious bliss coming to stay with you, forever.
My father whom the Doctor knew very well died at a faultless age of 95. My big egbon and dearest Doctor, you shall match him, and indeed surpass him. Katherine Hepburn wisely observed life and said “love has only to do with what you are expecting to give – which is everything.” You have a delectable and exemplary wife who has an extraordinary place with God because she has given much of herself, in love and care, and with such conviction that your total wellness has acquired a magical resonance from her personal devotion and ceaseless prayers. Every day, and in every way, Grandma is getting better and better, and God shall continually direct the lives of both of you into a peaceful realm of sunshine and sustained joyous motions.
It is happiness toward which our innate nature obliges us to eternally tend. Doctor, I thank you profusely for making me and my family always happy and joyous. I appreciate you more than you would ever know, and I always pray to God to gift to you immense wellness that wrought flawless longevity
In the face of confusion and hardship, my ambition and confidence would have been obliterated by Nigeria’s callous and inefficient bureaucracy. God supplied me a defensive shield. I won’t ever be able to thank Dr Deinde Williams enough for the selfless goodness that he extended to my rumbling life at the time of utmost need. You have acted on the law of God and as reward, His graces in your life shall never wane, and further benefits shall touch all the seeds of your body plus those of your larger family.
Your life has achieved a glorious accomplishment that assembled all the disputations of your early life into a feast of triumph and happiness that is immersed in God’s boundless powers of love for your entire family. What a life of charm!
Sir, with a merry heart and the highest esteemed always, plus infinite gratitude, I heartily say,congratulations!
Your children shall always encounter helpers allotted by God in their individual pursuits in life. All of them, including your grand childrengrandchildren, shall rise to lofty heights and God shall keep their feet firm on the soil of the earth. All of us who have come to share in the great joy of today shall forever be blessed. May our power of faith and love of one another fetch life’s most glorious victory as we strive to serve humanity and ever honour God.
Most of all, let each of us love one another just a littlebit more, do good always, and live with justice and with the ever present fear of Almighty God.
I sincerely thank all my brothers and sisters in the Lord for listening.
AdewaleAdeeyo, OON
Lagos, March, 2016
