The hockey stadium calypso dance
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Indeed, the latter part of last week was a busy one for Mrs Okoh with the media on her heels. It had nothing to do with the fame she has come to be associated with when it comes to Ghana’s independence history – the design of Ghana’s flag.
This time, it is about the national hockey stadium and the attempt to remove her name from the structure she had pioneered. Indeed, just minutes before I got to her home, reporters from Joy FM had just left her presence after getting her to speak live on their Saturday morning news analysis, Newsfile.
Turning 91 years just last month, Mrs Okoh had been enjoying her usual quiet days at home, until last week when a friend who visited her asked if she had heard the news that her name had been removed from the national hockey stadium and replaced with that of the late President Atta Mills. Her immediate response was “Oh, Ghanaians do not value the contribution of their people?”
Later on as she began to process that piece of information given her by the friend, she got a bit upset , because, in her view, if for nothing at all, once she is still alive, whoever authorised the change of name should have had the courtesy to inform her.
In my chat with her, I got a better understanding as to the role she had played in hockey at the national level and why the national hockey stadium was named after her some years after she had left the scene. Recounting the early beginnings to me with nostalgia, Mrs Okoh and her late husband had a deep seated love for the game and so they were pioneers in the formation of the Gold Coast Hockey Association, some of whose original members were Dr Evans Anfom, Mr Kofi Atiemo, Mr Kwasi Appiah and Mr Wartemburg.
When in the 1960s Ghana became a republic, she was appointed the deputy chairman of the new Ghana Hockey Association of which she later became the chairman. Sometimes leaving her job as a teacher and a mother, she travelled across the country promoting the game and very soon, they put together a national team which grew from strength to strength playing away matches with other national teams.
All this while, the association did not have its own hockey pitch for training. They decided, therefore, to find a piece of land where they could develop as their training grounds. As chairman of the association, she took the initiative to lead the search looking at a few locations in Accra including a place near Korle-Bu and another one near the Arts Centre. They discovered they had all been allocated for other projects.
Eventually, with her perseverance, the city council assigned to the association, a very marshy and clayey piece of land which apparently did not appear attractive to anybody. That piece of land is where the current Hockey Stadium, which a competent committee set up in 2004 christened after her, is located.
Despite the unattractive nature of the land, Mrs Okoh was not ready to let it go. With her personal resources and help from some philanthropists, they were able to reclaim the land and covered it with gravel. It was not the best for the game as players were encountering bruises and cuts on the gravelled pitch. As chairman, she approached the then managing director of the State Construction Company (SCC), Mr Edward Francois, with a proposal to help construct a befitting hockey pitch for them.
Her dream of the beginnings of a modern hockey stadium to develop the game of hockey in Ghana came true when SCC agreed to assist them construct a facility complete with a grass pitch, a pavilion, changing rooms and stands as well as plant trees and shrubs to beautify the place. With time, the association raised further funds to bring the facility to its current state.
So, how did she feel with the reversal of the attempt to remove her name from the edifice she had helped bring to fruition? Happily smiling Mrs Okoh said, “I feel great and I am happy that someone (the President), was thinking like me.” At that point, her phone rang. She quickly picked it up and after some two minutes of conversation, she dropped the phone with a much broader smile. Who had made her that happy? Was it the Mayor of Accra, the originator of the calypso dance, who called to apologise to her?
The phone call that lit up Mrs Theodosia Okoh’s face as she was chatting with me was from the President’s office. The message was that the President was coming to visit her at home.
The queen of Ghana hockey who, in her time led the Ghana hockey team to play international matches in Nigeria, Zambia, Spain and Malaysia was having the last laugh as the calypso dance drew to a close with her best foot forward, a Presidential apology and a home visit to crown it all.
By Vicky Wireko/Ghana
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