North Side patriarch and Cayman’s newest centenarian, Clinton Onslow Whittaker, has lived through a century of change in the Cayman Islands.
Born on 27 July 1926, he grew up at a time when his district was home to just a handful of families connected by dirt tracks, before electricity, mass tourism and large-scale development reshaped Cayman.
Over the next 100 years, he worked as a fisherman, farmer, merchant seaman, construction worker, dive boat captain, ferry captain and charter operator, building a career across many of the industries that drove the country’s development.
Now celebrating his 100th birthday, Whittaker says the biggest change he has witnessed is not the modern conveniences but the gradual loss of the close-knit community spirit that once bound Caymanians together.
“In my lifetime, Cayman has changed in ways I never could have imagined, but the thing that has surprised me the most is how much of our sense of family and community has faded,” he said.
Whittaker was honoured Saturday at the Craddock Ebanks Civic Centre in North Side, where family, friends and government officials – including Deputy Premier Gary Rutty, North Side MP and Minister Jay Ebanks and Speaker of the House Ezzard Miller – gathered to celebrate the milestone.
He also received a congratulatory message from King Charles III.
Early years
Born to Ju and Marnell Whittaker, Clinton was one of 10 children who grew up in a close-knit North Side community where, he recalled, every family knew one another.
“Everyone was more or less family, and whatever you did – good or bad – the whole district knew about it by the time you got home,” he said. “It was a place where people looked out for each other.”
His childhood was divided between school and helping support the family.
“From Monday to Friday, the day started early so we could catch the change of tide to go fishing or set out our fishing lines,” he recalled. “After that, it was off to the ground to help however we could. We came home for lunch or dinner, and the afternoons were spent with my siblings, taking turns as the ‘cob person’ while the family made ropes. It was a rhythm of work, family and tradition that shaped everyday life.”
He remembers a North Side where travel was mostly by foot, donkey, horse or bicycle.
“When I was young, North Side looked and felt like a different world,” he recalled. “From Frank Sound to Grape Tree Point, the road was little more than a narrow trail. Old Man Bay was made up of just seven major households: the Whittaker’s, the Millers, the McCoys, the Browns, the Greens, the Ranges, and the Fredricks – the families who formed the backbone of the community.”
Completing school was uncommon in North Side when Whittaker was growing up, but he finished his education before following a path taken by many Caymanian men of his generation – seafaring.
Providing for a family of his own
After early turtling expeditions to the Miskito Cays aboard the Antares and Goldfield, Whittaker signed on with National Bulk Carriers and spent the next 22 years as a merchant seaman, sailing to ports around the world to provide for his young family back home.
“Leaving Cayman as a young man felt like stepping into an entirely different world,” he said. “Up until then, the only planes I ever saw were the ones tracing white lines across the sky.”
Although working at sea gave him opportunities to travel, he said the hardest part was spending long periods away from his wife, Beryl Catherine McCoy, and their young family.
“That distance was something you felt in your bones,” he said. “You carried it with you through every shift, every port, every long night at sea. Missing them was the weight of the journey and the reason you kept going.”
When he returned to Grand Cayman, Whittaker helped build another chapter of the island’s history. He joined Don Dise’s Cayman Kai development team, working in excavation, contracting and construction on what became the original Cayman Kai Resort.
Once the resort was completed, he took to the water again as captain of its daily dive boats before later captaining the Kai Queen, the ferry that once connected West Bay, Prospect, Rum Point and Cayman Kai.
He and his brother Robert alternated running the ferry while continuing to tend the family’s plantation, which occupied land that is now home to Cayman Crystal Caves.
One reminder of that era stands today. The avocado tree at the entrance to the caves was planted by Whittaker nearly nine decades ago in the plantation’s early years.
He and his wife would later operate a bed-and-breakfast and he later established a charter fishing business.
What matters most
Asked what he considers his greatest achievements, Whittaker said, “Marrying my beautiful wife Beryl Catherine McCoy and our children.”
The couple raised four children – Handel Whittaker, Shirley Ann Whittaker Scott, Jerry Garfield Whittaker and Archie Burke Clinton Whittaker II. Three of them were present to celebrate his 100th birthday. Jerry Garfield Whittaker passed away.
The celebration also brought together much of Whittaker’s extended family, including his sister, Cynthia. The gathering came just days after the family mourned another loss, burying Whittaker’s 97-year-old sister, Nell Whittaker, on 19 July. Of the 10 siblings in Whittaker’s family, all but Cynthia have now passed away.
Looking back over a century of change, Whittaker believes Cayman has gained opportunities but lost some of the values that shaped his generation.
“I wish younger generations could experience the value of working for something with their own hands,” he said. “In the old Cayman, when you had to push through sweat and sometimes tears, you learned to appreciate every single thing so much more. Whether it was tending the ground, fishing at first light, or helping your family with whatever needed doing, the effort shaped you.”
His advice to young Caymanians: “My advice is simple: Reach for the stars,” he said. “The world is so much more open now than it was when I was working in the Miskito Cays, dreaming about what life might hold. Opportunities that once felt out of reach are right at your fingertips. Don’t be afraid to aim high, work hard, and take chances.”
Asked about the secret to reaching 100, Whittaker smiled.
“The secret to a long and happy life is simple: Eat what you can catch and grow, and appreciate everything,” he said. “That’s how I was raised, and it taught me to value the land, the sea and every blessing that came my way.”
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