George Havelock Sheppard was born in Port of Spain, Trinidad, on 16 December 1917 to Charles and Elsie Sheppard.    His father Charles Sheppard worked  at The Miller Stores in Port of Spain as an Accountant. Charlie, as he was known, was the son of an Englishman, Alfred Sheppard who was a Sergeant Major in the British Colonial Trinidad Police Force; his wife Virginia was the daughter of Madeiran immigrants.   George’s mother Elsie came from Arima, where her father Joseph Gomez ran the Miller Stores there.  The Gomez family were also of Portuguese descent.

Elsie was a full-time mother and housewife, as George was the seventh of their twelve children.  They were (in chronological order) Jessie (Brash), Madge (Gonsalves), Joseph (Boysie), Ida (de Sousa), Bertie, John, George, Robert, Sybil (Gibbon), Andrew, Audrey (Clark) and Florence (Johnson).  

My father Andrew was the youngest boy in the line-up and, thanks to his handwritten memoirs, we know that George was educated at Queens Royal College.  He wrote:

“Being the last of six sons, obtaining a place in the Government-run main secondary school was  a problem for my brother Robert and I because we had four older brothers attending that college, Queen’s Royal College, and their regulations did not permit any more than four pupils from any one family.  Consequently, Robert and I found ourselves at St. Mary’s College, otherwise known as C.I.C. (College of  the Immaculate Conception)..."

The Sheppard family lived at 30 Richmond Street, Port of Spain.  This was located at the corner of Richmond and Park Streets on the site that is now the Honda Dealership.    Sadly, Charles Sheppard’s health deteriorated and he died in 1931 at 45, leaving Elsie a young widow to raise twelve children.  George was just a 13 year old schoolboy.    

In his memoirs, my father recalls that after their father’s untimely death, their mother took in boarders to supplement the family income.  Because of the large quantities of bread the household consumed, she employed Mr. Harris, a Barbadian baker, to bake fresh bread every day for them. He would come to the house and start baking before dawn.  His mother arranged for Mr. Harris to bake extra bread which she sold to friends of the family who lived in the neighbourhood. These had to be delivered to the customers before 7:00 a.m.   

“Ma had several bread bags made, some to hold one or two or more pan loaves.  Each customer had a nail on the back or front  porch to hold the stringed bread bag.  The empty bag would be replaced by the full one.  Each bag had the customer’s name.  Problem – transportation.  Andrew, Robert, George borrow Boysie’s, Bertie’s and John’s bicycles, surround the bicycles with bags of bread and make sure you return for the owners to get their bicycles to get to work.  We “students” had to eat breakfast quickly and walk to school – and get there in time.  Many times we failed as evidenced by the black and blues on our hands or backsides as administered by our school masters.  But this was all part of life.  We loved Mama and understood the situation.”

George knew the meaning of responsibility and hard work from a very young age as, one by one, his older siblings found jobs and their earnings helped their mother raise their large family.  It was against this background that George started his working career as a youngster. 

In 1940, New Zealander Lowell Yerex (1895 - 1968) founded British West Indian Airways in Trinidad & Tobago.  BWIA became the country’s first national airline, and George became one of their faithful employees for most of his adult life.  

In 1942,  when he was 25 years old, George married  Elenora Juliet (Nora) Laing.   The following year their first child was born.  She was the eldest of 5 children born between 1943 and 1959 - Patricia (Pat), Marjorie, Stanley, Linda and Donna Mae.  It is unclear exactly when George started his career as an engineer in aviation, but we believe that it was throughout his marriage and up until his untimely death in 1961 - a span of at least nineteen years.