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The first thing you noticed about Fr Damian Grimes were the full-rim rectangle eyeglasses. Very much his trademark, they gave him the appearance of a scholar as indeed he was.

The spectacles also did little to hide a steely stare that was at once both mesmerising and intimidating. In fact, what has not receded from the collective memory of students once entrusted to his care is how, with genteel insistence, Fr Grimes was rigorously demanding of maintaining eye contact during an interface.

He was also keen on sitting with an upright posture, discloses Albert Gomes Mugumya, who authored a book titled The School in the Wilderness: Namasagali College, A Great Past Behind it after studying there from 1989 to 1995.

Fr Grimes, who died on September 4 aged 93 at the Abbotsbury Care Home in Southport, England, was Namasagali College’s most consequential head teacher after wielding the leadership reins there from 1967 to 2000.

An enchantingly paradoxical figure, the whip made of hippo hide he used to reprimand errant male students at the school divided opinion as much as his choice to be unfailingly supportive of the revealing uniforms female students sported.

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