Ryan Ba­choo

Lead Ed­i­tor - News­gath­er­ing

ryan.ba­choo@cnc3.co.tt

Michelan­ge­lo’s words echoed through the halls of the St Charles Pres­by­ter­ian Church in Ch­agua­nas yes­ter­day, where scores of friends, fam­i­ly and for­mer co-work­ers con­gre­gat­ed to cel­e­brate the life of for­mer Guardian Me­dia man­ag­ing di­rec­tor Gren­fell Kissoon.

“If we have been pleased with life then we should not be dis­pleased with death, since it comes from the same mas­ter,” Rev Daniel Teelucks­ingh quot­ed dur­ing his ser­mon to the con­gre­ga­tion.

It was em­blem­at­ic of a man who had con­front­ed death face to face and those clos­est to him yes­ter­day re­called how he had re­it­er­at­ed, “I am ready to go.”

Kissoon died last Wednes­day at the age of 79, just one week be­fore his 80th birth­day.

Among those at­tend­ing the fu­ner­al were chair­man of the ANSA McAL Group, Nor­man A Sab­ga, for­mer man­ag­ing di­rec­tor of Guardian Me­dia, Nicholas Sab­ga, cur­rent chair­man of the Guardian Me­dia board of di­rec­tors, Pe­ter Clarke, and scores of oth­ers Kissoon had worked with and had a di­rect im­pact on.

Kissoon had a glit­ter­ing ca­reer in the me­dia, hav­ing joined TTT in 1988. Six years lat­er, he joined the Trinidad Broad­cast­ing Com­pa­ny be­fore be­com­ing man­ag­ing di­rec­tor of Guardian Me­dia in 1996. He would lead the com­pa­ny un­til his re­tire­ment in 2009. Per­haps his most im­por­tant work was es­tab­lish­ing CNC3 as a tele­vi­sion sta­tion in Sep­tem­ber 2005, adding the vi­su­al el­e­ment to a me­dia con­glom­er­ate with deep roots in the print and ra­dio in­dus­tries. It was new ter­ri­to­ry and it called on all of the ex­pe­ri­ence of Kissoon to nav­i­gate the tele­vi­sion sta­tion through its em­bry­on­ic years.

But be­fore the me­dia, Kissoon was al­ready tapped for great­ness. His man­age­ment skills had be­come promi­nent when he worked in the Hu­man Re­sources de­part­ment at the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA). He would then en­ter se­nior man­age­ment at Ca­roni 1975 Lim­it­ed, be­fore be­com­ing an ex­ec­u­tive man­ag­er at TTT and the ANSA McAL Group.

At TTT, his man­age­ment was test­ed like no oth­er time in his ca­reer. Kissoon was one of the hostages dur­ing the at­tempt­ed coup in Ju­ly, 1990. For days, he and oth­er hostages were held in the build­ing. His close friend Mar­tin Daly sent re­marks and with­in them, he de­tailed how Kissoon man­aged the emo­tions of the cri­sis and kept his staff at the na­tion­al tele­vi­sion sta­tion calm.

Trib­ute af­ter trib­ute yes­ter­day de­scribed a man who had im­pact­ed al­most every life around him with a su­pe­ri­or knowl­edge in run­ning a busi­ness.

Dr Chaitram Lutch­man, who was his broth­er-in-law, re­called how Kissoon’s grasp of run­ning a busi­ness ben­e­fit­ted him.

“He said to me once, ‘No­body cares about how much you know un­til they know how much you care. Show them that you care and they will move moun­tains for you,’” Dr Lutch­man said.

He al­so re­vealed a side to Kissoon that placed em­pha­sis on his man-man­age­ment tech­niques but al­so his in­sis­tence on de­vel­op­ing staff.

Kissoon, he said, was fa­mous for say­ing, “If you have a don­key in a horse race, you can train the don­key for­ev­er but all you will get is a faster don­key not a race­horse” —a les­son to busi­ness­es to in­vest wise­ly in their com­pa­ny and in train­ing.

“He had the abil­i­ty to en­gage with peo­ple, from the Prime Min­is­ter to the jan­i­tor, and was slow to anger,” Dr Lutch­man added.

The con­gre­ga­tion al­so learned that ed­u­ca­tion was key for Kissoon.

“He was a con­sum­mate learn­er, nev­er giv­ing up on the quest for knowl­edge,” said Vish­nu Ram­lo­gan, who de­liv­ered the eu­lo­gy.

Ram­lo­gan ex­plained that dur­ing pri­ma­ry school years, Kissoon had to study un­der a man­go tree at night un­der a flam­beau. He said his fa­ther passed away when he was on­ly 22 and the weight of 10 sib­lings and a moth­er fell on him and his broth­er Moti­lal. How­ev­er, Kissoon even­tu­al­ly at­tend­ed the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI) with­out ever go­ing to sec­ondary school and grad­u­at­ed with an ho­n­our’s de­gree in Man­age­ment Stud­ies.

He said af­ter his re­tire­ment, Kissoon be­came a cer­ti­fied Mas­ter Coach and a me­di­a­tor and had many High Court mat­ters re­ferred to him for me­di­a­tion.

“Gren en­joyed work­ing and found great joy in do­ing so up to the age 78. He was al­ways very pro­fes­sion­al and high­ly re­gard­ed in the com­mu­ni­ties in which he worked. He end­ed his ca­reer with an ex­cel­lent rep­u­ta­tion and an ex­cel­lent record,” Ram­lo­gan ex­plained.

He de­scribed Kissoon as “the ‘can-do’ per­son when you had a chal­lenge, not­ing he was gift­ed with the abil­i­ty to bring ma­tu­ri­ty, good com­mon sense and in­sight­ful analy­sis to any sit­u­a­tion, with a gift to craft so­lu­tions to fit the per­son­al­i­ty of whomev­er need­ed his help.

Kissoon was in­stru­men­tal in mak­ing Guardian Me­dia prof­itable and a mul­ti­me­dia com­pa­ny.

Clarke paid trib­ute to his pre­de­ces­sor, say­ing, “The Gren­fell Kissoon I got to know was thought­ful, pa­tient, kind, com­pas­sion­ate, al­ways avail­able and will­ing to share his knowl­edge and ad­vice.”

Clarke al­so re­layed the words of Guardian Me­dia’s im­me­di­ate for­mer man­ag­ing ed­i­tor, Rose­marie Sant, “In the work­place, he was re­ferred to re­spect­ful­ly as Mr Kissoon, a leader who was nev­er too busy to speak to any­one who want­ed to talk. He was more like a fa­ther-fig­ure than a CEO. He had an in­domitable spir­it. He en­cour­aged a cul­ture of re­spect.”

Rev Teelucks­ingh was al­so a friend of Kissoon. He re­called of this gi­ant in me­dia man­age­ment, “He had a full and mean­ing­ful life. It seems as though noth­ing was miss­ing in Gren­fell’s life, and he could say, I have toiled, I strug­gled, I lived hon­est­ly, I lived humbly and I have con­quered.”