Camille Clarke

Thor­ton Mar­cus Gar­cia, the T&T Guardian's for­mer cir­cu­la­tion man­ag­er and trustee of the Guardian's Need­i­est Cas­es Fund, has died.Gar­cia, 83, the fa­ther of three, who worked with the Guardian for 33 years, died on De­cem­ber 30 at the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal.Gar­cia's wife, Char­maine Sa­hadeo, said he had suf­fered from chron­ic leukaemia for the past two years and his blood count was low.

In an in­ter­view yes­ter­day, Sa­hadeo said she had lived with him for the past 25 years and she was sad­dened by his death."I took care of him for the past four years and he was in the clin­ic two weeks ago and need­ed an ap­point­ment, but the nurse didn't make one," she said."We went to the hos­pi­tal on Fri­day be­cause he was breath­ing hard. I stayed with him whole day in the hos­pi­tal and they said they didn't have a bed for him un­til that night.

"The next day the doc­tors said he need­ed blood and they gave him one pint, which was not suf­fi­cient. On Sun­day, they said he need­ed donors, when every­body drink that week­end. Where were we go­ing to get blood?"Mon­day he was dead. The doc­tors and them is some­thing else. They know he need­ed blood or he might still be alive."Bar­ry Gill, for­mer cir­cu­la­tion man­ag­er, de­scribed Gar­cia as a "cir­cu­la­tion gu­ru and men­tor."

"When I joined Guardian, Tom was cir­cu­la­tion man­ag­er and I was hired as mar­ket­ing as­sis­tant and then went to cir­cu­la­tion. He asked me to come to the de­part­ment and I un­der­stud­ied with him for years and be­came his as­sis­tant," he said."We worked a long time to­geth­er and I learned a lot from him. He was a gu­ru in cir­cu­la­tion. He was a good man and he was good to me. He loved hock­ey and was a play­er in his days at the Har­vard Club."Gill said Gar­cia was al­so a lover of mas.

"I used to think of him as a young old man. He used to have his shirt un­but­toned and gold chain on his chest. Every­body was like a close-knit fam­i­ly. He was a good men­tor to me," he said.For­mer col­league Paula Chow said she worked with him for many years.

"We worked as col­leagues and I was a ju­nior per­son. He worked with Ms (Therese) Mills (then Guardian ed­i­tor-in-chief and lat­er News­day founder who died on New Year's Day). He was from that era and he was an old work­er, stal­wart and founder of the Guardian. I came and met him here," she said.Gar­cia's fu­ner­al will take place on Jan­u­ary 7 at St There­sa's RC Church, Wood­brook, fol­lowed by in­ter­ment at the Lapey­rouse Ceme­tery. A col­lec­tion will be tak­en up for Friends of the Blood Bank.

In light of the com­plaints made by Sa­hadeo, the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal's com­mu­ni­ca­tion de­part­ment said yes­ter­day it would make in­quiries in­to the mat­ter.