As a pan­nist played a ren­di­tion of “You raise me up” and the cas­ket con­tain­ing the body of John Babb en­tered the St John the Evan­ge­list RC Church in Diego Mar­tin, a smil­ing Dea­con Mike Smith urged mourn­ers to stand say­ing, “Come let us do some­thing nice for John, let us cel­e­brate his life.”

And what a life he lived.

More than a jour­nal­ist, par ex­cel­lence, Babb was yes­ter­day re­mem­bered as a lov­ing fam­i­ly man, de­vout per­son, na­tion­al awardee, mu­si­cian and weightlifter.

“They don’t make this mod­el any­more,” de­clared Dea­con Smith as he point­ed to Babb’s cas­ket.

Ad­dress­ing the con­gre­ga­tion dur­ing his homi­ly, Dea­con Smith asked a ques­tion that elicit­ed si­lence.

“Who tak­ing his place now in the com­mu­ni­ty? Who?” he ques­tioned.

Smith, who knew him for over 55 years, said Babb came from a dif­fer­ent it­er­a­tion of life in Trinidad and To­ba­go, a time when so­ci­ety looked out for each oth­er.

“What he was do­ing was what God sent him to do, to bring the good news to peo­ple, to touch them to help them on their jour­ney, to feed them at times, to clothe them and to help them,” the dea­con said.

De­liv­er­ing the eu­lo­gy, Babb’s daugh­ter Deb­o­rah-Ann Babb-Prince said her fa­ther saw jour­nal­ism not as a job but as a vo­ca­tion.

She re­vealed that his jour­ney in jour­nal­ism be­gan at the Port-of-Spain Gazette, where he worked for one cent an hour.

Babb-Prince said her fa­ther’s rare abil­i­ty to write in the short­hand ab­bre­vi­at­ed sym­bol­ic style set him apart from the rest and dur­ing the Dole Chadee tri­al, that skill came to the fore.

“My fa­ther’s rep­u­ta­tion and suc­cess as a jour­nal­ist was his ul­ti­mate achieve­ment. He had a pas­sion to get the news sto­ry right and short­hand gave him an edge and ac­cess to many peo­ple and ex­pe­ri­ences world­wide,” she said proud­ly.

Those who knew Babb said he was one of the few re­porters who had the trust and there­fore di­rect ac­cess to the coun­try’s first prime min­is­ter, Dr Er­ic Williams.

In his 70 years of jour­nal­ism, Babb amassed sev­er­al awards.

“He re­ceived the Hum­ming­bird Sil­ver for ser­vice to coun­try in 1994, and in 1995 he re­ceived the Hum­ming­bird Gold Award. In the wake of the 1990 at­tempt­ed coup, the Me­dia As­so­ci­a­tion award­ed him for best re­port­ing and al­so best in­ves­tiga­tive re­port­ing. In 2010, he re­ceived an award for out­stand­ing pi­o­neer­ing con­tri­bu­tion to the de­vel­op­ment of print me­dia in Trinidad and To­ba­go as a re­porter, lead writer, colum­nist, ed­i­tor and gen­er­al ed­i­tor from the Trinidad and To­ba­go Pub­lish­ers and Broad­cast­ing As­so­ci­a­tion,” his daugh­ter re­called.

Babb was al­so hailed as a men­tor to sev­er­al in the in­dus­try. Ev­i­dence of his im­pact could be seen in the pews at the church, where some of this coun­try’s no­table cur­rent and for­mer re­porters came to pay their re­spects.

Samp­son Nan­ton, Deputy Man­ag­ing Ed­i­tor at Guardian Me­dia Lim­it­ed, said Babb was a dream as­set to a young re­porter.

“Com­ing in­to the me­dia I knew that the gap be­tween me and him was huge. But he man­aged to tran­scend that gap very eas­i­ly. He was very ap­proach­able, he would come to your desk, look at your sto­ry and rewrite it in front of you to show how you should go about it. And there was nev­er a time, no mat­ter how busy he was, that you could not en­ter his of­fice and talk to him. Not on­ly was it ben­e­fi­cial to me in terms of learn­ing from him but it al­so al­lowed me to hear of his dif­fer­ent ex­pe­ri­ences and to hear about his ca­reer and life in me­dia and I can tell you that was the great­est in­spi­ra­tion for me,” Nan­ton re­called.

Mean­while, for­mer jour­nal­ist Fran­cis Joseph cred­it­ed Babb for show­ing him a path­way to be­com­ing bet­ter at his craft.

“He was a per­son who, from day one, told me nev­er com­pro­mise old talk with the truth. He would al­ways say in court, write what you hear in court. And in those days we had no cell phone, so if some­body called and said there was a mur­der in Diego Mar­tin, you had to go, you couldn’t get it on the phone or some­one would send a pic­ture on What­sApp. So he used to be over your shoul­der to make sure you get it right and that paid off, he was very good to the young re­porters that came in,” Joseph said.

Babb, 91, died in hos­pi­tal on Au­gust 3. He was re­gard­ed by many as a found­ing fa­ther of the News­day news­pa­per and was al­so news ed­i­tor at the Trinidad and To­ba­go Guardian News­pa­per.

Fol­low­ing yes­ter­day’s fu­ner­al ser­vice, Babb was cre­mat­ed at the Bel­groves Fu­ner­al Home.