A saint at heart

THIS WEEK'S personality profile on www.Go-Montegobay.com features Larklin Hall, former Assistant general manager of Jamaica National Building Society.

"Proper, poised and yet down to earth are the immediate impressions that one gets of Larklin Hall, former assistant general manager of the Jamaica National Building Society (JNBS) where he worked for almost 32 years. But even though he spent 22 years at the head office in Kingston, Mr. Hall had always known that Montego Bay was his home and that he would someday return to the second city.

No. He is not a "Born a Bay" like so many of the residents aren't. But in his words "Montego Bay grows on you". It's a sentiment, we learned, echoed by many a "Montegonian".

For Hall, the "growth process" began back in 1966 when he was transferred to Montego Bay as a price inspector, having worked with the Trade Administrator's Department for over 14 years. Prior to that, he worked in a hardware store, having just come from rural Jamaica ­ Aboukir, St. Ann, where he was born.

A saint at heart Mr. Hall could not quite settle down into the job of a price inspector, and one only has to talk to him for a few minutes to understand why. His genuine concern for ordinary people was incongruent with the job of reporting the "little man" - butcher, market woman, shopkeeper etc ­ whose prices may have been inconsistent with that of the then government regulated prices.

When one day "a poor market woman" saw the team of price inspectors checking an item that she was selling, she ran, loosing some of her clothing in the process. It was Mr. Hall who had to save the day and "pin up the woman's clothes" at the police station. At the court sitting, Hall maintained that the woman was not entirely to be blamed since she had to purchase the particular item from a government department at an excessive price. The woman was freed. A subsequent letter of condemnation from Hall to the government earned him an unwritten reprimand."

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