KAY-MARIE FLETCH­ER

Se­nior Re­porter

kay-marie.fletch­er

@guardian.co.tt

The Bor­ough of Ari­ma is once again mourn­ing the loss of one of its own, as one of its leg­ends, me­dia gi­ant Jones P Madeira, was laid to rest yes­ter­day.

He died on Jan­u­ary 10 af­ter be­ing hos­pi­talised at the Er­ic Williams Med­ical Sci­ences Com­plex for a week.

He had been ail­ing from se­ri­ous med­ical con­di­tions.

He now leaves be­hind his wife of 53 years Mel­ba, along with his chil­dren Melanie, Lo­rilee, Justin and Dex­ter.

Join­ing his fam­i­ly, al­most the en­tire me­dia fra­ter­ni­ty showed up to the San­ta Rosa RC church to say their farewells to a man who in­flu­enced many— past and present—in the in­dus­try.

Madeira, who died at 80, start­ed his ca­reer in the ear­ly 1960s.

His decades-long ca­reer spanned from po­si­tions at the NBS Ra­dio 610, British Broad­cast­ing Cor­po­ra­tion (BBC), Caribbean Broad­cast­ing Union, the Cari­com Sec­re­tari­at—where he pro­duced ra­dio pro­grammes, Trinidad and To­ba­go Tele­vi­sion (TTT), as well as Ed­i­tor-in-Chief at the Trinidad Guardian and the Trinidad News­day.

One of his most defin­ing and un­for­get­table ca­reer mo­ments oc­curred on Ju­ly 27, 1990, dur­ing an at­tempt­ed coup when Yasin Abu Bakr and a group of in­sur­gents stormed TTT, turn­ing Madeira in­to a fa­cil­i­ta­tor of com­mu­ni­ca­tion be­tween the Bakr in­sur­gents and the T&T De­fence Force (TTDF).

But his son Justin shared that off-air he was even a bet­ter hu­man.

Giv­ing the eu­lo­gy, Justin de­scribed his fa­ther as a clown, philoso­pher, leader, teacher and ex­em­plar. He said, “My fa­ther the philoso­pher. Dad­dy no doubt was a wise man. He al­ways had some phi­los­o­phy that fit any sit­u­a­tion to a T. But the best phi­los­o­phy of all was you can nev­er be ready for any­thing in this life, on­ly pre­pared. My fam­i­ly and I had to ap­ply this to our cur­rent sit­u­a­tion, and this may have been his wis­est phi­los­o­phy yet. We knew this day would come. We weren’t ready but dad­dy, you sure pre­pared us.”

Sev­er­al jour­nal­ists al­so praised Madeira for his con­tri­bu­tion to jour­nal­ism both lo­cal­ly and re­gion­al­ly.

Pay­ing trib­ute to his friend, vet­er­an jour­nal­ist Tony Fras­er high­light­ed his love for pro­duc­tion, how he men­tored young re­porters and how in­te­gral his role as a jour­nal­ist was to Cari­com.

Fras­er added, “He was un­flinch­ing in his ac­tions about in­de­pen­dent jour­nal­ism. He was faith­ful to the au­di­ence. He al­ways want­ed to give in­for­ma­tion to the au­di­ence and that is what he did.”

Al­so present at the fu­ner­al yes­ter­day was Chief Jus­tice Ivor Archie as well as me­dia pro­fes­sion­als, in­clud­ing Guardian Me­dia Lim­it­ed Man­ag­ing Ed­i­tor Kay­mar Jor­dan, Pe­ter Richards, Do­minic Kaliper­sad, San­dra Ma­haraj, Neil Giusep­pi, Rose­marie Sant, Roger Sant, Andy John­son and oth­ers.

While re­porters learnt a lot from him, even out­side of the me­dia, he was a men­tor to politi­cians as well.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, for­mer ed­u­ca­tion min­is­ter An­tho­ny Gar­cia said, “Jones has been my men­tor. In fact, when I took the de­ci­sion to en­ter elec­toral pol­i­tics, Jones was the first per­son whom I con­sult­ed and since then through­out my ca­reer as a politi­cian, I’ve al­so al­ways re­lied on ad­vice on Jones. His pass­ing there­fore has left a void. I am al­so very grate­ful for all the things he has taught me, and I am sure that I am not the on­ly one who has been sub­ject­ed to his wis­dom.”

Many res­i­dents of Ari­ma, in­clud­ing the for­mer and present may­ors, al­so told Guardian Me­dia that Jones P was seen as a hero.

Ari­ma May­or Bal­li­ram Ma­haraj said he shared a close re­la­tion­ship with the Madeira fam­i­ly as his wife and Madeira’s wife Mel­ba were school­mates.

Ma­haraj said, “He will al­ways be re­mem­bered by the Ari­ma peo­ple. Jones was loved by the en­tire of Ari­ma.

For­mer may­or and Ari­ma MP Ash­ton Ford said Jones was his very close friend, who was loved by the peo­ple of Ari­ma.

Ford said, “Jones would be one of those great fea­tures of Ari­ma that will nev­er been for­got­ten and he was al­ways an idol.”

Sev­er­al Ari­ma coun­cil­lors were al­so present yes­ter­day, in­clud­ing coun­cil­lor for Cal­vary Je­niece Scott, Ari­ma West-O’Meara coun­cilor Dave Ma­haraj and Mal­abar South coun­cil­lor Joyce­lyn Wor­rell.