Most of us knew Samuel McK­night as the vet­er­an jour­nal­ist, fear­less crime re­porter, avid foot­ball fan, a man of the arts and a po­lit­i­cal ac­tivist.

With such a pletho­ra of ac­tiv­i­ties it re­al­ly speaks to the met­tle of the man when dur­ing his fu­ner­al ser­vice at the Faith As­sem­bly In­ter­na­tion­al Church, we were re­mind­ed of McK­night the hus­band, fa­ther, grand­fa­ther and all-round fam­i­ly man. A man who ran a dis­ci­plined house­hold where ed­u­ca­tion was key.

“Dad­dy was a stick­ler for school­work,” his son Du­ane rem­i­nisced through his tears.

“Every night af­ter we ate din­ner, we had to watch the news, we had to keep up to date with our cur­rent af­fairs, but no mat­ter how much we tried, no­body could con­test the mem­o­ry of Samuel McK­night, he was our so­cial stud­ies text­book,” his daugh­ter Nik­isha Chester said while flanked by Mc Knight’s four oth­er chil­dren.

They all said his call­ing their names in his deep bari­tone voice was enough to let you know that he heard the mis­use of a sub­ject-verb agree­ment. But it’s the same voice that they said melt­ed their moth­er Sylis Per­ry­man-McK­night’s heart many years ago, whom he met in a twist of fate af­ter be­ing forced to take a year off from Holy Cross Col­lege af­ter break­ing his leg play­ing foot­ball.

His rep­u­ta­tion for fear­less jour­nal­ism was al­so re­mem­bered. His son Du­ane re­called a din­ner ta­ble sto­ry where he told them about an as­sign­ment he went to where res­i­dents were not pleased to see mem­bers of the me­dia and ac­tive­ly chased him away and de­spite hav­ing to run for his life, “You know he got up the next morn­ing and went back there to do the work again, they didn’t stop him.”

And while there were mem­bers of the me­dia fra­ter­ni­ty in the con­gre­ga­tion, there were al­so some well-known po­lit­i­cal mem­bers of the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment, such as Ed­die Hart and cur­rent Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment for Tu­na­puna, Es­mond Forde. In a video trib­ute to McK­night, they thanked him for his ser­vice to his par­ty, even serv­ing as a cam­paign man­ag­er for one of the lo­cal Gov­ern­ment can­di­dates.

But it was McK­night, the fa­ther that took cen­tre stage.

His daugh­ter Can­dace McK­night-Greenidge spoke about the man who would ball­room dance with her in the liv­ing room, the fa­ther she snug­gled next to be­fore be­ing chased away by her moth­er.

She re­mem­bered his words right be­fore she got mar­ried.

“Fast-for­ward to walk­ing up to the aisle, he kept telling me, Can­dace we can turn around and go you know, just say the word and we’ll leave, if we reach up there, there’s no turn­ing back, now is the time.”

Lis­ten­ing to this all, it was hard-pressed, to sum up his con­tri­bu­tion to this life and pre­sid­ing pas­tor Cheryl Ann Car­dinez sought to un­der­score: “He did live!”

But his daugh­ter Jen­nelle McK­night summed it up per­fect­ly,

“So farewell to my dad­dy, the world’s best jour­nal­ist, crime re­porter, all fours play­er, sports­man, his­to­ri­an and fa­ther.”