Darkest Hours brough out the Best in Henry Hagan - a Tribute

Henry Ato Hagan 1969 — 2003 By Harold Ofori

There are men who rise refreshed on hearing a threat; men to whom a crisis which intimidates and paralyzes the majority, - demanding not the faculties of prudence and thrift, but comprehension, immovableness, the readiness of sacrifice, - comes graceful and beloved as a bride. Napoleon said of Massena, that he was not himself until the battle began to go against him; then, when the dead began to fall in ranks around him, awoke his powers of combination, and he put on terror and victory as a robe. So it is in rugged classes, in unweariable endurance, and in aims which put sympathy out of the question, that the angel is shown.

Ralph Waldo Emerson from Addresses, published as part of Nature; Addresses & Lectures. Delivered before the Cambridge University Divinity School, July 15 1838

He came to form one in 1983, after graduating from Royal International School in Kumasi. While in Pearson, he lived in obscurity, athletically, until his Form Five year when he made significant inroads in the Prempeh team. In 1988 he won the 200m, 400m and the long jump and helped Pearson House win the inter-house competition. But that only formed the beginning of his hardships.

There had been a student uprising in the school in 1988. It was held against what the students regarded as unecessary increment in boarding fees, which received a sympathetic ear of the PTA. This writer tends to believe that those were very heady days, with revolutions going on on all quarters, and a coven of young males needed an outlet for penting up their feelings. We all needed a school-wide holiday when we could miss classes and flout authority for a few hours. It was a sitting time bomb. The Headmaster's error was his inability to foresee the sign of those tempestous times. That event would have happened sooner or later, but I candidly think it was not necessary, but for 'a piece of the action'.

But in the view of critics, when the students of Prempeh rebelled in the late 80s, they were pointing to all that was wrong with The Kings College.

Whatever else the young men intended by that rebellion, they were actually indicating the legacy of the wasted years of "Atiemocracy."

While the College's bursar was embezzling school funds, our incompetent Senior Housemaster was billing boarding students as day students. This writer was actually a beneficiary of Mr. Adomah's ineptitude, having received a bed in a corner of Pearson Dorm 7 and two terms' worth of luch, supper and breakfast free of charge! Indeed hundreds of students were considered day students by the Senior Housemaster while they enjoyed free meals at the College's expense.

It begs the questions: had the bursar been stealing money together with his former boss, Mr. M.K. Atiemo (Headmaster, 1977-84) and how long had this practice been going on?

The PTA was innundated with requests for extra donations and by the time Headmaster Sackey (Headmaster, 1985-96) sacked both his bursar and Senior Housemaster, the students anger could not be quelled.

To compound those failings, there were many impromptu mid-term vacations (owing to food shortages) which always affected the academic calendar adversely.

If Tusker Muller, as they ludicrously insisted on calling Headmaster Sackey, was the man to get us out of this Armageddon, then there was little sign so far. He even used his Speech Day addresses to call for de-boardinization of schools.

At one time the Headmaster had to return money collected from students for the purchase of a school bus when he heard rumours of an impending student demonstration. That he did return the money was a pointer to his nefarious mission.

Come the crunch, it was back to the old tuition increases.

The harrowing existence which the Headmaster's predecessor (M.K. Atiemo) had ushered the average Prempeh boy into was enough to make lesser men wither, and Mr. Sackey was the one left holding the baby; his task....to appease a group of teenagers and their demanding parents. The more he did it, the greater the shadow which loomed over the students' prospect of staging a revolt.

It finally happened. One midnight a group of uncompromising students, incensed by the tuition increment raised the alarm throughout the school and woke up all students. They took the Headmaster's housegate and office by storm and destroyed property. Sackey did not risk an appearance and called for the Police.

Classes were suspended for a few days, ring leaders were suspended and the PTA addressed the students' concerns.

We had a Headmaster who will not tolerate rebels and demonstrated as such by not only dismissing students but also refusing to admit to Sixth Form students who caused trouble during their pre-O-Level years. He allowed no departure from his interpretation of the master/student relationship, his word was sacrosanct and he suspected some form five boys in Pearson House to have played a part in the revolt. Pearson seniors were really hounded. And for Henry Hagan, it was a double-whammy since he was the tallest boy in the school. His size alone offset his taciturn viewpoint on school issues.

But candidly, despite his history of having been an inflexible scrubbing monitor during his Form 3 year, Henry was a boy who couldn't say Bo to a goose; the guy could not send a junior to go and fetch him water because of his conscience: he could not envision wasting any parent's school fees by sending his/her child and thereby wasting a few seconds from the young one's study time. Hagan never let anyone wash his shirt for him. Nor did he "crucify" anyone in the Dining Hall. Yet he was a prime suspect because of his size, though he swore that he was asleep and too tired after exhaustive training to get up when the revolt was taking place. He could only tell that to the Marines!

When the O-Level results came in, the Headmaster declined to give him a space on the Prempeh College Sixth form roster. He had to go elsewhere to continue. His parents forbade him from participating in any athletic activities, until the Technology Secondary School (the day secondary school of the University of Science in Technology) pleaded with the parents to give Henry a second chance at athletics at their school.

However, Hagan may never have acquired the necessary restraint and concentration to develop his athletic abilities had he not been hardened by the protests and fights that broke out in the stands of the Kumasi Sports Stadium when he took to the field in Technology Secondary School (Tech Sec) athletics jersey.

A Biology teacher at Tech Sec School (don't forget Henry was a Science student!), Mr. Osei Akoto, himself a fan and teacher of the newly-arrived Hagan, decided to fight the Sports master of T.I. Ahmadiyya Secondary School (AMASS) at the Ashanti Regional Inter-Colleges Super Zonal Athletics competition because the AMASS Sports master and Headmaster had protested the eligibility of Henry Hagan to the Sports Council officials. The dissenters had been brainwashed by Prempeh Headmaster, R.T. Sackey, to believe that Hagan is academically unqualified to compete for any school, since he did not meet Prempeh's Sixth Form admission criteria. This was in spite of Henry having missed GCE aggregate 1 by only 1 point - a score which was far superior to the GCE scores of more than half of Prempeh's sixth form athletes on the field at that particular time! Imagine how tough it is for one to remain in the top 20 of his class in the science classes (Forms 4S, 4M, and 5S and 5M) at Prempeh. Yet Henry placed in this elite group in the rigorous Science curriculum at Prempeh and had a higher O-Level exam result than nearly all the Arts students in the school athletics team, yet Prempeh headmaster considered him unqualified for any school in Ashanti.

When he failed to achieve his initial aim of getting the Tech Headmaster to deny him admission, he succeeded in brainwashing most of the rival schools, particularly AMASS, OKESS and WESCO to protest against Hagan on the field in February 1989's track and field competition. The news of Hagan's ineligibility was predominantly refreshing to AMASS because Prempeh, which had beaten AMASS for the trophy the previous three years had a down year and OWASS and OKESS hadn't been title contenders for the previous three or four years. The only school that stood in their (AMASS') way of winning the trophy was Tech Sec, a school that was "loaded" with athletes such as "Atiko," Pierre Lisk, "Billy Osa" and the inconsistent but dangerous national javelin record holder Agyapong. Success in eliminating Henry Hagan from the Tech team was vital to AMASS ambition. And there's the rub!

The AMASS sports master, having protested to the Sports Council officials for a race to be delayed because of Hagan's suspected academic ineligibility, was to be confronted by Mr. Osei Akoto, the Biology master and Sports Committee Chairman of Technology Secondary School who had recruited Tech student "machomen" to back him up and "rush" the AMASS sports master should his (Akoto's) slaps provoke a riposte from the embarrassed AMASS Sports master. This was the origin of the annual "Who's Who Among Machomen" competition held by Tech Sec students on the tracks during the annual Sports festival at the Kumasi Sports Stadium. Every year, few muscular Tech students run onto the tracks to face their fans with their chest bare in order to have their fans select and cheer "The Most Macho Man." This silliness originated from the Hagan legend.

Come to think of the cheek of it, the AMASS program itself had on their team Sixth Formers who were believed to have never taken O-Levels in the village schools where they were recruited from. There were rumors that some of AMASS' athletes were non-students, and those who were students had had other candidates write their exam for them.

These jealousy-driven schools and critics - our own Headmaster included - had a hard time selling this bogus and inane accusation to the National Sports Council, since Hagan's academic record was clean, and could have actually earned him a scholarship somewhere, had it not been for the fact that Sixth Form education was free.

But not being the one to wilt from jealousy-driven distractions, Henry endured. And thank God for small mercies, Henry Hagan got the opportunity to take to the field. He came out so invigorated and so towering that, when he ran, the air that generated around him was enough to blow away a Samson. Here was a guy who was nearly 6 foot 5 inches tall, running the 100 meters, 200 meters, 400 meters, 1 X 400 meter and the 4 X 400 meter relays and the long jump and he won them all!!! Not only did he break the record held by the great Koora (Emmanuel Tuffour) of AMASS, he also smashed KUHIS' darling boy Billy Murphy's record. Moreover, in all these races, the gap he left behind himself and Prempeh's best runner - Atta Kwadwo C. (Pepsi) - was nearly 50 meters. He could receive a baton at a distance of 60 meters behind the leading runner and stretch his long legs at an incredible rate to run past the finishing line in sweeping triumph!

Rueben Tetteh Sackey was therefore consigned to gnashing his teeth in the VIP booth (Heads of Schools sitting area) as he wondered how Hagan became that good. It seemed at that time that some celestial forces had taken over the soul of the Prempeh reject and were propelling him at rate more than a million times faster than he used to be when Henry the Unready ran for Pearson in the previous year's inter-house competition at Prempeh, when he was merely an emerging talent.

Henry Hagan - the oasis of calm - had become so famous that his success transcended school lines; no matter what school one attended, he had to support him. The very shy Henry who couldn't look people in the eye or lift his hands when his name Astro was screamed by the fans, had become so recognizable that bars and restaurants and discos closed around Asokwa (the city where the Stadium is situated), so that even kenkey sellers would rush in to the stadium to take a look at his show. Soothsayers and jujumen, as well as necromancers alike, proclaimed, "Wei dee, yenhu bi da" (We have never seen anything like this!). Even kyakya collaborators (i.e., hardened gamblers in Kumasi who would bet against any darn thing) staged special exhibitions in his honor.

Henry was probably the only famous athlete in Ghana who never had a girlfriend. While girls from all over the city were falling at his feet, he was too shy and timid to look at one in the face, and the problem had been compounded by the fact that he had moved from the all-boys Prempeh to a co-ed Technology Secondary School, where for the first time he had been relegated to eating lunch with girls. While even this writer, an insignificant junior at the time with very Lilliputian raps was searching for his soul mate, Henry the Great was evading the women who were singing Hossanah to his name.

The detractors' effigies were now in the dustbin. To consign them, Henry the Great had to survive persecution by folks loyal to Prempeh causes (especially administrators in higher places: regional and national team selection committees and influential Education Office officials who were protégés or allies of Sackey).

Henry set the relays records with Atiko, Lisk (who would later be inspired by Hagan to come to Prempeh 6th Form), and Billy Osa and set the records in the other sprinting events. He held in 1990 the Ashanti Inercollegiate and the Ghana Inter-Regional 400 meter record. He set the Ghana 4 x 400 relay record with Hesse, Boateng and Solomon Amegatcher - a record that still stands - and went on to compete in the Barcelona '92 Olympics.

After dominating the Ashanti and Regional athletics for his Sixth Form years, he earned a scholarship to study at the University of Alabama, where he would team up with Ghana's Solomon Amegatcher again and set the school's 4 x 400 meter relay indoor record with a time of 3:08.03 in 1993 in Indianapolis. This record set by Hagan, Alohan, Simmons and Amegatcher stands as number 1 on the school's all-time list. As far as outdoor records go, Hagan, Alohan, Simmons and Amegatcher is 3rd on the all-time list with a time of 3:03.45 (set in 1993, Houston). That same year, he recorded a 47.98 in Gainsville, Florida, which is 10th on the all-time list. In the 4 x 100 m relay, his times of 39.67 in 1992 (with Allen, Lee and Simmons) and 39.78 in 1993 (with Allen, Ghana's Amegatcher, and Ghana's Boateng), remain 9th and 10th on the all-time list for outdoors, respectively. An NCAA All-American, the 47.98 is not his best time; it is his 46.35 (set in Auburn) which stands at 10th on the Ghana all-time best.

Henry Hagan was a legend of his time. Even today, he's still the most familiar face in Kumasi athletics. Hagan is the only athlete who can be recognized (without any prior introduction) by any taxi driver in Kumasi. It is probably because of his unusual stature in the realm of track and field and the mysteriousness of his whole performance. Joe Space, Kojo Drissah, Shaibu Mohammed, Kwasi "Ups" Abrefa, "Billy Murphy," "Koora," and Prempeh's own Augustus Lawson and Kojo Duodu were all legends at the Kumasi Sports Stadium, but Henry the Great is a standout who could be identified from a mile away in the middle of the night.

Hagan was a Research Specialist at Emory Medical School's Department of Biochemistry. He was also completing his course work for a Master of Public Health degree at the prestigious Rollins School of Public Health at Emory University.

In October 2002, we sent him a questionaire for the purpose of this website, because we considered him one of the men who left footprints on the sand of time. Busy as he was, he turned in the completed questionaire just before leaving for Ghana in April 2003, where he hoped to show his wife, Cynthia Arnold, Pearson House. He was to give us his photo collection along with new photos of his first ever visit to Sofoline upon his return. But Henry died upon stepping out of the plane at his arrival at Atlanta's International Airport on May 1st, 2003, of pulmonary embolism due to deep venous thrombosis (a clot developed in his leg and migrated to block his lungs). P.E. is a condition that afflicts 650,000 people annualy in the USA alone, and kills 150, 000. Indeed pulmonary embolism is a condition that has troubled medical science for years. This 150,000 : 650,000 statistic has NOT changed within the last 25 years. When the thrombosis is caught before it migrates, it can be treated and complications prevented with anticoagulant drugs like heparin. But once it migrates to block the lungs, its almost always fatal. Immobilization is a major predisposing factor. The muscles of the legs act as pumps to maintain venous return from the lower extremities and since Henry had been sitting in the plane for about 9 hours, inactivity of his muscles led to venous stasis, which led to the subsequent development of the thrombophlebitis.

He took his wife, and his in-laws (Cynthia's sister and parents) to Prempeh campus and showed them Pearson House. Cynthia told this writer: "I went to Prempeh College campus with him; what a beautiful campus. He took me Pearson House. My sister and my parents spent 3 weeks in Ghana with us and we loved it. It's the best trip I've ever taken and I intend to visit Ghana at least once every year."

It is evident that this was a man who loved Prempeh College; despite what happened between him and our former Headmaster, he continued to show an intense loyalty towards the school. When Prempeh placed 9th in the 1991 Inter-Collegiate Athletics at the Kumasi Sports stadium, he wept for our alma mater. That may be why he inspired his fellow Tech Sec team mate Pierre Lisk to come to Prempeh 6th Form in order to help perk up our fading athletics program. Yes, while he was in another jersey setting records for another school, he was searching for ways to recruit for Prempeh and make the alma mater better.

He was a Prempeh Ambassador who will be missed.

If Ralph Waldo Emerson were alive today, he would probably count Henry with Napoleon and classify him as a man who rose refreshed on hearing a threat. In a rugged crises which would have intimidated and paralyzed the majority, Henry the Great "came graceful and beloved as a bride."

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