Samuel Adedapo Olaitan - Online Memorial Website

My first recollection of Venerable & Professor Olaitan was in early in 1973 shortly after my dad (the late Ayo Bankole) had been appointed Director of Chapel Music at the Chapel of the Healing Cross. I my sister Femi were junior members of the choir along with Bimpe and Deola Olaitan, Femi Ogundipe and several other children drawn from the LUTH and CMUL community. We attended choir practice and theory of music lessons twice weekly and the time before practice and immediately afterwards were the opportunity for us to get up to all sorts of mischief.
Occasionally we’d have to meet up with Bimpe and Deola at Prof’s office at CMUL. I recollect that I could never stay inside the office for more than five minutes at a time because the room was always as cold as what I imagined the North Pole to be (in spite of incentives to stay such as the ever present cold drinks and biscuits). Prof was always a bundle of positive energy and somehow infected everyone around him, including us young ones in the choir, with that get-up-and-go vigour. As a result we had such a delightful albeit rigorous time in the choir.
My father and Venerable Olaitan were a tag team. If this were the British Premiership League, Prof was Chelsea’s Jose Morinho and my dad was his team captain. Any resource required to help the choir including music books, teaching aids, collaborations with other performers, recording sessions were all made available by Prof. If at any time he saw that our attention was flagging or troop strength was waning, Prof was always on hand to bully or cajole us dependent on the demands of that particular situation. Under Prof and Ayo Bankole, the Chapel of the Healing Cross Choir became a formidable group and one of the very best choirs in Nigeria.
That period had an indelible impression on me and in later years Prof would consolidate this impression with his ever constant advice and positive disposition to whatever I was engaged with.
Adieu Venerable Olaitan, I will miss you greatly, but I take
solace that you are at peace in the bosom of the Lord. Sun Re O!
Ayo Bankole II

YFF Adedapo

All of the numerous people that knew and loved my father knew he loved acronyms.

YFF Adedapo stands for Your Father, Your Friend, Adedapo.  My father signed every one of his countless notes YFF.  He was truly my father and friend.  My earliest memories of my father are of a warm, laughing man who cocooned and surrounded his children with love.

My father told me that he marked my month birthdays when I was a child, he, my mother and Funlayo would celebrate with their friends when Adebimpe turned 1 month, 2 months e.t.c. My father always had time for me. He taught all his children how to swim.  He taught me how to polish my shoes and my very first lesson on how to wash clothes came from “yff”, he taught me how to wash a handkerchief.

When my mother was in the hospital to have Adedoyin, my father looked after us. He made us lunch himself, he pounded yam for us, made the stew perfectly but made Okro that was separate from the water in which it was cooked!  We ate it with relish. I could go on and on recounting the sweet memories of my childhood with my kind and loving father Adedapo.

Growing up is never easy but my father tried to make it easier. I have always been a person who loves to stay at home.  My father would call me “home bird” and say Adebimpe; no man is coming to marry you if all you do is to sit at home. We would laugh.

Yff was not always gentle with his children.  He would correct you with such love; he was never one for the cane.

Yff loved Jesus Christ; he was a Christian not in word but in deed. He taught us so many hymns and prayers but never forced religion on you.  He knew it was a personal choice and not a matter for eye-service.

In his later years my daddy was a proud and loving grandfather – always granddad never grandpa.  He had time for all his grand children and would do all sorts of things with them.  He encouraged them to read books and be creative; he created a special space in his office where they would spend time painting. It always made me smile to see his rules written out in their handwriting and pasted on his wall.

He would read to his grandchildren and help them with their homework, all these in spite of his impossibly busy schedule.

My precious loving daddy has gone to rest. He was truly unique. He had courage.

“He who would be valiant gainst all disaster, Let him in constancy follow the Master.”

THERE’S NO DISCOURAGEMENT that will make him once relent his first arrowed intent to be a pilgrim.

I will miss you but my heart is full of loving memories.

Yff was a truly great man.

He is resting at the feet of Jesus Christ, his Master.