He­len Dray­ton

There are peo­ple for whom words can nev­er be suf­fi­cient, but then again, sin­cere and heart­felt ex­pres­sions are all that we can of­fer about peo­ple who are beau­ti­ful, kind-heart­ed, gen­tle, and ex­em­plary hu­man be­ings. Such was the Jones P Madeira, whom I had known for the 45 years of his pro­fes­sion­al life.

That takes me back to the gold­en days of jour­nal­ism and com­mu­ni­ca­tions with­in the cir­cle of some of his il­lus­tri­ous col­leagues and friends: the Guardian’s first fe­male chief ed­i­tor and lat­er chief ed­i­tor of News­day—Therese Mills, the ex­cep­tion­al George John, the per­fec­tion­ist Carl Ja­cobs, the af­fa­ble stal­wart John Babb, the re­mark­able Bene­dict White—Owen Bap­tiste, the cheery, wake-up voice of Bob Git­tens, the poignant sports per­son­al­i­ty Raf­fie Knowles, the gen­tle soul—Bil­ly Re­ece, the wise Ras­ta, Kei­th Shep­pard, the dar­ing Kei­th Smith, and who could for­get the la­dy of ra­dio and tele­vi­sion, June Gon­salves?

There was the qui­et gen­tle­man Don Proud­foot—all those guardians of jour­nal­ism now gone to a jour­nal­ist’s heav­en. Not for­get­ting to men­tion the liv­ing leg­ends Tony Fras­er, Pe­ter Min­shall, Trevor Mc­Don­ald, and Ken Gor­don. Many oth­ers graced the pre­cious and mem­o­rable days of great jour­nal­ism. I know that Jones P Made­ria is smil­ing at the men­tion of those brave ones dur­ing his time. He’s prob­a­bly now with all those amaz­ing jour­nal­ists who paint­ed the Fourth Es­tate with ex­cel­lence.

Jones P dis­tin­guished him­self in the gamut of me­dia busi­ness­es that com­prise the Fourth Es­tate, mak­ing sig­nif­i­cant con­tri­bu­tions to de­vel­op­ing lo­cal and re­gion­al me­dia. He left foot­prints of in­tegri­ty, com­pas­sion, and calm un­der trau­mat­ic con­di­tions.

He was a re­li­able me­dia per­son, and one didn’t have to sec­ond-guess the ve­rac­i­ty of his work. I don’t think any­one un­der­es­ti­mat­ed the met­tle be­neath the serene dis­po­si­tion, which was ev­i­dent when, in 1996, the late Hon Bas­deo Pan­day rash­ly and un­just­ly tried to brand him “racist’ over a front-page head­line, “Chut­ney Ris­ing”.

Jones P, the quin­tes­sen­tial jour­nal­ist with a strong back­bone, re­signed, and so too had oth­er ed­i­tors who had re­fused to com­pro­mise prin­ci­ple over po­lit­i­cal ex­pe­di­en­cy and med­dling in the me­dia’s busi­ness. I re­call that af­ter­wards, he and fel­low jour­nal­ists de­cid­ed to con­vene a con­fer­ence on press free­dom. They couldn’t get spon­sors ex­cept for one—the lo­cal Roy­al Bank of T&T.

Jones’s un­stint­ing sup­port for press free­dom made him an un­con­quered li­on. The quin­tes­sen­tial jour­nal­ist would nev­er kill a good and true sto­ry by giv­ing in to pres­sure. He was calm, com­pas­sion­ate, and pro­fes­sion­al, with an au­thor­i­ta­tive per­son­al­i­ty that com­mand­ed re­spect and ad­mi­ra­tion by sim­ply who he was. We could have re­lied on his words that had con­fi­dent­ly in­formed us of the va­garies of lo­cal and Caribbean life with­out af­fec­ta­tion and dra­ma. In­deed, he was a men­tor for those work­ing with him.

He, Raoul Pan­tin, Hamil­ton Clement, and sev­er­al oth­ers were he­roes of the 1990 at­tempt­ed coup. He was an es­sen­tial link be­tween evil in­sur­gents and se­cu­ri­ty forces. It was a trau­mat­ic time for the na­tion, but for some more so, and di­rect­ly. Suf­fice it to say, I was called up­on to tell him and Raoul that they would be freed. Jones P did not be­lieve me at first, but the rest will re­main our poignant, blessed, and thank­ful con­ver­sa­tion.

Every year since the an­niver­sary of the at­tempt­ed coup, Jones P and I spoke on the phone and re­mem­bered those dark days, up to the year be­fore last. Since then, he was too ill.

Farewell, dear Jones P. You were an in­com­pa­ra­ble jour­nal­ist.