Deborah John

When we were Young

Zorina Shah

I was glad when Deborah appeared in the Express newsroom that morning in 1974. I had already been there more than a fortnight on the Features and Sunday desk when she showed up in her short Afro hairstyle,  bespectacled, her head in the air, dreamily contemplating the space as if she were born to it. 

Port of Spain could be difficult for someone like me who had probably been to the city five times before opting to work there. On one occasion I emerged from Service Commissions on Charlotte Street, looked both ways and could not decide which direction would get me back to Independence Square. 

Deborah (Trinidad Express photo)

Anyway back to that day. There was Ainsley Sahai as Sunday Editor, the celebrated Kitty Hannays as his assistant and Andy Pitman and Roslyn Preston-Ali, the sub editors. I don’t quite remember if we met Keith Subero or he came after but he was there on the desk with us and I nicknamed him “Boyo”. He drove “Betsy”, a Volkswagon car, the one like Archbishop Anthony Pantin had with the engine at the back. Keith focused on news and along with the legion (hyperbole) of correspondents across the Caribbean, Toronto, New York and London, made the Sunday Express a thing of beauty. It racked up distribution to everyone’s satisfaction, so much so that Ken Gordon came down to the newsroom himself to give us our bonus cheques for Christmas.

We were teenagers, Deborah a little younger. She was the daughter of George John, a man known to every journalist and since he was Public Relations Officer to Prime Minister Dr. Eric Williams at the time, he was also known to every politician. I possessed no journalistic pedigree but had met David Renwick, the paper’s editor, at a career guidance seminar. 

The newsroom was staffed by an outstanding cadre of journalists, among them Jeff Hackett, Ramdath Jagessar, Charlie Ramsumair, Peter Balroop, a court reporter named Carlton Khan and Azad Ali who would snap up the exclusive story on the hanging of Abdul Malik (Michael X). The news editor Jerome Tang Lee, well he was one of a kind, he knew how to seize the moment and leave the competition gasping for breath. The sports desk also had its own brand of experts, Bootins Alkins, the editor and his dream team of Mervyn Wells, George Baptiste, David Brewster and Spotter Edwards. Ossie Cordner was my choice of photographer but she preferred Tony Forte. Hubert Alexander and Wahid Baksh made up the quartet. We talked about some of those days after she wrote a tribute to Kitty Hannays a few years ago and we agreed that my memory was better than hers.

Deborah stayed in features while I moved on to news. The events in the oil and sugar industry, Bloody Tuesday, privatisation of the sugar industry (Tate and Lyle) and the industrial thrust at Pt. Lisas opened up a whole new world of news reporting, shifting the locus away from Port of Spain. South Trinidad no longer had a corner somewhere in the back of the paper. The general elections of 1976 which saw a change in the political landscape drew journalists to San Fernando. South business magnate Bobby Montano started his own newspaper. I kept the members of the San Fernando Borough Corporation on their toes, among them Rakeeb Hosein whose son Kazim is now Minister of Local Government. Newspapering was fun.

We regrouped in 1979 when Keith Smith put Deborah and me on his team to revitalise the features desk. Those were good days. We either ate in the canteen upstairs or walked along Independence Square looking for variety, same as we had done five years earlier.  Her mother Jean no longer came by with stuff she had just baked at home. There were now more women around, on the Sunday desk, the afternoon paper “The Sun” and the South bureau.

Keith would propose new ideas for stories and we would frequently oppose his suggestions. It was at one of those sessions that he suggested one of us should write a story on Zuniaga. Who is Zuniaga, you may very well ask, just as we did. Zuniaga was the last name in the telephone directory. One of us should call up Mr. Zuniaga and write a story about him, what work he did, about his family and how he felt about his place in the directory. I rejected the suggestion outright, so Deborah was stuck with it. Keith asked for that feature for weeks before I pleaded on her behalf and he dropped the idea. I just checked the directory and Zuniaga would have still been the last name if Zuryda Edoo had not been listed by her first name.

The bug for news reporting bit me again and I moved to the newsroom. Deborah blossomed in features. We still visited the mas camps, panyards and calypso tents. On a visit to Max Awong on the corner of Ariapita Avenue and Ana Street, we got roped in to help with costumes. In 1980 we worked at the Queen’s Park Savannah on Carnival Monday. She was registered to play in Peter Minshall’s ‘Danse Macabre’ and fretted no end when the band passed across the stage while she had to sit there in the Grand Stand.  

I moved to an idle life and Deborah remained, only leaving the Express for a short period. We met on the streets and phoned each other over the years.  I often called to question the accuracy of published stories. 

I last spent a full day with Deborah when we met in Guyana in 2010. It was the first time we ever hugged each other. I would never have done that in my youth. I walked her around the Guyana Times newsroom and press room, the printery with its array of state of the art equipment. She was a guest of Dr. Ranjisinghi Ramroop, the paper’s owner and publisher. It was a public holiday for the birthday of the Prophet Mohammad (Peace be upon Him) called Youman Nabi in Guyana. We had a hard time convincing people we had known each other for 36 years.

I don’t know how she developed as a writer and editor other than by her move up the ladder at the Express. I suspect she would have reached the top wherever she had worked. I do know that she found a feature story in every situation, something of human interest, something that explained why we were the way we were. She mirrored her father’s sense of humour and could make a joke in any situation. When he became the editor of the Express, it was a little difficult deciding whose jokes you would rather not hear, his or hers. You couldn’t escape them.

We hadn’t spoken in more than a year, when she sent me a note this past April and we planned to meet, before she went silent. Our conversation had ended.

Deborah John: July 9, 1956 - August 23, 2017

NUN SO BRAVE: HOPE

I sat with Ismay on the porch at Ana Street, Woodbrook that day in 1998 while Mary and Elsa took Rosario to the airport. Rosario was leaving for Perth, a sort of sabbatical after those years in Matelot, but really preparation for another round of hard work. I conjured up extreme images of her drawing water from a well and hewing wood.

“I won’t see my daughter again,” Ismay said as her three girls drove towards Wrightson Road. What does one say to that? 

There was a phone in Perth. We didn’t have whats app and Skype in those days and TSTT’s overseas rates were damaging, six dollars a minute plus VAT. When I called that first time, I waited 10 or more minutes for her to come to the phone. I called once more. Mary had already called. Rosario was coming home. Ismay hadn’t seen her daughter again.

From Australia, her next stops were Bangladesh and Ahmedabad in the Indian state of Gujarat. She had talked Grameen banking, micro finance and empowering women through entrepreneurship for years with Fr. Michel de Verteuil. Chittagong was the place to learn the methods through which the most vulnerable were dragged from poverty. Although I knew of Muhammad Yunus and his work among Bangladesh’s poorest, Rosario’s enthusiasm gave it new meaning.

I don’t remember calling Ahmedabad, but there was better email. From there, Rosario was going to Shimla in the Himalayas. When I needed to contact her I got her number from Hina Shah.

Hina Shah with widows at a meeting in Gujarat. ICECD photo

I called the convent in the Himalayas and heard my voice echo four times when I asked for her. I had to tell her that Archbishop Anthony Pantin had died. They had grown up in Woodbrook, he a little older. Their families were friends. His brother Clive had been a great help to Matelot when he was Minister of Education. Rosario was already sitting on the bus to New Delhi and came back to take the call. “Yes, yes, this call is from China, you have to talk,” I could hear the voice coaxing her.

Back home she launched into HOPE, Helping Ourselves Prosper Economically. She trained her crew for the field and toured the coast from Mayaro to Matelot, going inland to Plum Mitan, Sangre Grande, Valencia, La Horquetta, Couva and other villages. HOPE created a new class of small entrepreneur, changing many lives and bringing dignity to many women. 

South Sudan must have been difficult. I went to Valencia to help her prepare for that trip. How best to communicate, that was the big question. She and two other Holy Faith sisters from Ireland would be teaching the children of the Toposa in Riwoto, a project arranged through the Kiltegan Fathers. If she got an internet connection, we could use email. That worked a few times. She wrote when she picked up wifi from an NGO. No call ever went to the phone number we were given. I called USAID once and they knew the sisters, they promised to deliver a message.
 

Holy Faith Sisters arrive in Riwoto, January 2013. St. Patrick's Missionary photo

Rosario is back home again. Hers has been a long journey since the day she first left Ismay in 1958 for Irish shores, to become a member of the Holy Faith Congregation, to make lifelong friends among the Irish, among the people of St. Brigid’s, Siparia, Matelot and wherever else she has been.

For being brave, putting the needs of children first and standing up for the poor she has been recognised twice in national awards at Trinidad and Tobago's Independence and in several other places.

Maybe someday if I take the advice of her friends Trudy and Cheron Herrera and Anise Maybodi, we will write her story. I know it won’t come from her. That is because I am familiar with the story of her aunt Sr. Dominic Marie Turner, a Mary Knoll sister who lived in Hong Kong in the early days of the Cultural Revolution. They do what they have to do.