by Zorina Shah
I remember that night in May 1975, a hush-hush operation.
Jerome ruled the roost in an all-male newsroom, all male until Sunity Maharaj arrived some time in 1977. Newspapering was exciting and Jerome did his best to make it so, to create an “Express” brand. There was a host of specialist reporters, Jeff Hackett. Charlie Ramsumair, Carlton Khan, Ramdath Jagessar among them.
Azad Ali, who I last saw writing for Jack Warner’s Sunshine newspaper, was the crime reporter. He tapped away noisily at the old bluish-green typewriter, walked to Jerome’s desk, went to the library a few feet away, came back to speak to Jerome and returned to the typewriter. I wasn’t going to get a ride to San Fernando in the blue car, so I left.
The story reached the night desk. It is said and I verily did not know what to believe, that a gentleman working on the night desk, meaning a gentleman engaged in laying out the paper and writing headlines, who was a stringer with the BBC, called in the story when it came to him as the newspaper’s lead. I had seen him operate before. He recorded the story on his small voice recorder. He removed the cover of that part of the phone that one spoke into, connected the recorder with a wire and played his recording directly to his contact.
It is also said that the Guardian’s press on St. Vincent Street was running and had already churned out a few thousand copies when the news came on the teleprinter. They stopped the press and changed the front page.
Jerome had been looking at an international scoop, that Michael Abdul Malik would be hanged at 7 o’clock on that morning, May 16, 1975.
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| Trinidad Express photo |
While I worked on the Sunday desk, Jerome would occasionally ask me how I got a story, like the one on Sahara dust. I only worked directly with him, though not in his newsroom, from San Fernando that summer of 1976, leading into the September general elections. Harry Partap had just returned from the Turks and Caicos Islands. We were 30 miles away, but he treated us as if we were sitting at the desk next to his.
Jerome, never left a story for the next day. Sometimes I wished I had not mentioned it to him. There was a day I returned tired from the trek on San Fernando Hill with the San Fernando Citizens Action Committee. I told him I had something that I would send the following day, but he wanted it right away. I spent the time writing the story while Mungal Chattergoon captioned the pictures. Then I stood on the corner of Chacon and Penitence Streets and waited for the next taxi going to Port of Spain to send the package of story and film to the head office. The report appeared across the centre spread the following day, a Thursday. At the statutory meeting that afternoon, Mayor Gertrude Kirton cited the contents of the story and ordered a halt to quarrying on the San Fernando Hill. Jerome waited for the new story. His instincts and timing had been right.
Jerome was brave in his quiet way and he gave his reporters the freedom to write despite the political pressures being exerted on media houses. His team was also made up of only the brave. The Guardian followed the lead of Dr. Eric Williams during the oil and sugar strikes and dubbed the coalition of trade unions “Communist”, without question, while state-owned radio and television were being censored by its board headed by the public servant, James Alva Bain. San Fernando became a big focal point in the news, a shift from a few column inches to leading the dialogue. The tired old PNM/DLP narrative was coming to an end as the United Labour Front made inroads in the sugar belt and picked up votes on the East/West Corridor.
I lived just around the corner from Alloy Lequay, the leader of the DLP. At just after two o’clock on elections day, he conceded defeat to Raffique Shah in the Siparia seat. In fact, he just conceded defeat. In Princes Town, Nizam Mohammed was contesting against the popular businesswoman (PNM) Amoy Mohammed. It was my task to tell Jerome that a second person of Chinese descent (partly) was losing at the polls, as if he cared about jokes or ethnicity. He cared about news. The split in the ULF kept the South office buzzing. Bobby Montano had brought the team of high powered reporters to launch Southern Star. Jerome was not the least bit fazed. I have often said that the turn of events gave Robert Moore, Thakur Persad Jharoo, Lenny Coolman and others reason to smile. I have hardly ever mentioned Jerome who opened the door and kept it wide open.
When the calypsonian Maestro died, he wanted me to cover that story. I told him I didn’t like to do funerals. I ended up there in Princes Town at a Catholic Church where people stood on the benches in front of me. He always liked Princes Town stories. He took my couple paragraphs on two guys who stole a PTSC bus and worked ‘PH’ from Princes Town to Moruga for Carnival and turned it into a front page story.
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| He was happy to see Phoolo Danny-Maharaj's book in print. Phoolo's photo. |
The last few years when I saw him, we met at the racing pool, both of us big fans of English horseracing. His programme was always well-marked from reading the forms like Racing Post and Sporting Life, while mine was clean from relying on my memory. We may have been there for horses, but we talked some politics, cricket and newspapers. It was how I learnt he had bridged the gap between old newspapering and the new, straddling the world of the old brigade from the post independence era and a new generation of bright young people.
Sunity Maharaj who crossed that bridge with him said of him what we all know - A Truly Special Person.
Jerome Tang Lee. May his soul find eternal rest.
