My 5-minute flying experience, work with Rawlings - Spio eulogises former boss

Dr. Ekwow Spio-Grabrah, who owes most of his political life to the late former president, Flt. Lt. Jerry John Rawlings, has recalled his first flying experience with his late boss – an experience that proved to the former president that he could trust him.

Working close to Rawlings, he said that he first had to prove himself in flight with the former president, in a way that would cement the confidence his former boss would come to have in him for so long.

Speaking with GhanaWeb TV as part of our Memorial Series marking the death and burial of Flt. Lt. Jerry Rawlings, Dr. Spio-Grabrah shared some of his experiences with the man, narrating what it felt like to be handed a control wheel of a plane in flight and asked to fly it.

That experience, he described, was the beginning of a long relationship built on trust even as he believes that it was the former president’s way of testing his loyalty – to find out if he is someone who was ready to take up challenges and how he handled tough situations.

He also touched on the working relationship with the Former President and on which grounds he chose his appointees as then president.

As a way of remembering him, Dr. Ekwow Spio-Garbrah has asked Ghanaians to live by the tenets of discipline and diplomacy that summed up the ex-statesman’s life.

Flt. Lt. Jerry John Rawlings died on November 12, 2020, at the Korle Bu Teaching Hospital, at the age of 73, and was buried at the new Military Cemetary in Accra on January 27, 2021.