We will miss Mr Tino Geddes

Saturday, November 19, 2011

It's been said that the late journalist extraordinaire Mr Tino Geddes was as comfortable with the leaders of our society as he was with ordinary folk on the streets.

The truth is that he was far happier with the latter group. He was, as phrased by the president of the Press Association of Jamaica Ms Jenni Campbell "the voice of the voiceless..."

How Mr Geddes, a product of the educated and firmly established middle class, became that "voice" may well be related to when he entered journalism.

For when Mr Geddes joined The Gleaner in downtown Kingston as a young man freshly graduated from high school in the late 1960s, the posh towers and offices of New Kingston had not yet taken complete hold. Not just journalists, but professionals of every description still mixed easily with the people on the streets of downtown and found comfort in the bars, restaurants and hideaways close to the famous Kingston waterfront.

Those early experiences would have had a lasting effect as Mr Geddes moved on to make his name and gain immense respect in broadcast journalism.

He never left the 'corners' in good times and bad, gaining the trust and respect of those who lived there. He would advise colleague journalists to visit the inner-city communities in the good times, so that when the bad times came the locals would know them and trust them enough to tell their story.

And when those bad times came, his colleagues would arrive to find Mr Geddes, relaxed in the most opportune 'oasis', glass in hand, already with the whole story.

He loved sport, recreation and entertainment and was among that rare breed of journalists who could cross from the reportage of hard news to lighter activities with ease and equal capacity.

His thoughtful, careful approach to his job came across in his delivery as a broadcast journalist, unhurried, clear and well modulated. His decades in broadcast journalism notwithstanding, Mr Geddes never lost touch with the print genre, and his publishing of the Miami-based Caribbean Echo newspaper and his columns over the last three years in the periodic, community-based The News provide hard evidence.

Mr Geddes made friends easily and had many in all walks of life. Blessed with a wonderful sense of fun and the ability to make others laugh, Mr Geddes was always able to lift the spirits of those around him even as his long battle with cancer approached its inevitable end.

He was no saint and never pretended to be. Rather, Mr Geddes had that capacity — to be found in only the warmest and most generous of personalities — to laugh at his own weaknesses and foibles.

He was no churchgoer, but was a deeply spiritual man with an unbreakable belief in an all-mighty God.

Unconventional to his very core, Mr Geddes years ago chose to abandon the conventional remedies recommended by cancer care specialists. It may have been pure coincidence, but Mr Geddes outlived by years the timelines predicted for his passing by some in conventional medicine.

He recognised the inevitability of death, but also knew that as a self-respecting member of the human race he had a responsibility to fight, always fight, against the dying of the light. And when his time came, he knew he had to embrace death without rancour or vexation.

Note the final words of his last poetic column in The News which he insisted could only be published after his departure:

"Death can only be delayed. Never defeated or denied.

I recognise it, I respect it, but I have never feared it.

Now I prepare to join it in its embrace.

God has been good."

We will miss you, Tino Geddes.

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We will miss Mr Tino Geddes