This Week We Feature Young Professional Clayton L. Panthier
In this life no matter where we go, where we live, how long we stay and what we do, destiny has a way of ensuring we complete that circle of life that we were destined to.
In the case of our Young Professional for this Week Mr Clayton L. Panthier he is convinced that his earthly duty is all about community service but in a way that is not the very popular fashion. He feels deeply that he has a special part to play in the lives of youths to share a craft that he possesses to help the younger generation own a skill that sees them producing with their hands.
Mr Panthier is a leather craft producer, one that would not see him doing the common traditional flip flops but he has a gift with leather that sees him designing and producing leather bags, purses and wallets in a fine way that one would think they came off the production line of a high end international factory.
However this is a skill that has a story behind his life. You see, Clayton L. Panthier was born in the Virgin Islands but migrated to the USA with his parents after the death of his grandmother when he was still a primary school student and the circle of life took him by the hand and brought him right back home some five years ago.
He has done things that he is not proud of today, lived a life that has taught him the importance of making wise decisions and most of all it also taught him that everyone has a destiny.
“My mother lived in a very good neighbourhood (in the USA). It was predominantly whites, but as a young man I didn’t find it fun there so you want to go hang out in the bad neighbourhood and I went there and you know, young man bad neighbourhood, I started getting into trouble. But after a while I realized that this is not for me, it took a while but eventually I had to return home but I came back with a skill,” said Mr Panthier.
“Most of my life I have been in America. I came back here at 37 years of age and started working for various companies… I was at Byras Creek where I was the head mechanic for two years, left there went to another company, it was more money… but then I realize that I have to do my own thing.”
He did start his own company in marine mechanics, an industry in which he was academically certified but there was a passion of his that was being stifled and was screaming from the bottom of his heart to be given a break.
“…But my passion was always doing leather craft on the side. I always love doing it, that was always my hobby,” he said.
It also dawned on him that the Virgin Islands (VI) is a country that is all about tourism and with his skills he thought that producing leather craft bags would see him raking in a handsome dollar from tourists.
“But believe it or not I haven’t sold one item to a tourist yet, it has not reached the tourists… it’s pure locals buying it, it hasn’t reached the tourists and that alone says a lot,” he said.
But more than selling his products for a daily income he also feels that he owes it to the country of his birth to share his skills with the youths of the VI. He said that from the onset of returning to the Virgin Islands he visited the technical institute and offered his services.
“I went to one school in particular and I told them I would stop working, I know you guys cannot pay me what I make, but I would stop working and I would teach this – just pay me to pay my bills – and that’s it, I am a person that lives below my means.”
For as much as he has seen so far there is not the level of craft skills as he possesses in the Virgin Islands. “We may have that; I have not seen. There are local skills but if you check WE Virgin Islanders do not have it. The skill I have I want for MY PEOPLE to have [them] and it’s not about the profit for me. It’s because I understand what we have here in the BVI, we circulate finance and tourism and we have to have something of our own for the tourists.”
He said that he dearly embraces education but there are those who do not make it and they are the ones that are left behind because society does not have the provisions to hold those young people who did not make it academically.
“Everyone tries to push education in kids; there is nothing wrong with education, that’s what we do here, education… come out first in your class. But everyone cannot come out first, everyone cannot be the best track star, yea they play baseball but how far they go with the baseball, they play basketball how far do they go? They are limited, they don’t get as much exposure as the need,” he reasoned.
Mr Panthier feels that more often than not the ‘little people’ are being overlooked. “You have the little people that we overlook and the little people is the little craft man and a lot of people may have it in them but they don’t know it’s there, I never knew it was there in me until I was exposed to it,” he said.
Ultimately Mr Panthier desperately searches for the opportunity to teach leather craft to youths not for the personal accolades but to play his part in destiny of helping a kid that may not have had the glowing academic papers own a skill that would see him or her logging on to a career that keeps them gainfully occupied, puts a comfortable dollar in their pockets and more so be able to give to the tourism industry something that the country can boast of as coming from the hands of a rooted Virgin Islands son or daughter.
“We have got to invest in ourselves and our own communities,” is his motto.
His bit of advice to youths is that there is no limit to life. “You would have made bad decisions, done wrong things along the way but is what you do after those experiences. You never know what you have in you until you are exposed, do not let the opportunity to learn something pass you by,” he said.
Mr. Clayton L. Panthier can be contacted on telephone number 284-499-0927.
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23 Responses to “This Week We Feature Young Professional Clayton L. Panthier”
We have the strangest hit and run story but beyond the hit is the run to meeting and getting to know an amazing and talented man. From Biras, to the Boat yard to stand alone and leather work, you know you got my support and you know this.
Go out and hold your head high and do your thing. I got you!
Johnny cake's on me!