George John remembers Sealy GEORGE JOHN, Trinidad and Tobago journalist and Gleaner reporter from 1958 to 1962., flew in from Port of Spain on Thursday to attend the funeral service for the late former Gleaner Editor, Theodore Sealy. He sent the Gleaner the following message: "I came to Jamaica bearing the condolences of the Media Association of Trinidad and Tobago and the Commonwealth Journalists Association in recognition of Theodore Sealy's influence on the profession. In my view, it reached well beyond the boundaries of Jamaica. The first time I saw Sealy was way back in the early 1950s. I was a sub-editor at the Trinidad Guardian, and as the stocky figure strode through the newsroom to the Editor's office, his face looking straight ahead, neither left nor right, my colleague, then the Gleaner correspondent in Port of Spain, said: 'There goes the black Editor'. The Editor of the Guardian and most if not all the other editors of daily newspapers in the Caribbean were at the time all white or near-white. Two to three years later I inherited the position of correspondent in Port of Spain of the Gleaner, a newspaper I had come to know well because of its presence among other regional journals in the Guardian newsroom. This association hardened with the birth of the West Indies Federation in 1958 and Sealy's decision to set up a Federal News Bureau in the Federal Capital. I can't say for sure that Sealy, as a Jamaican, was committed to the federal principle. He had of course visited many of the islands and was acquainted with some of their politicians and their journalists. But he certainly saw the need for the Gleaner to be represented in the Federal Capital so that, as he told me, Jamaicans would know what their representatives in the Parliament and the Federal Government were up to. To my astonishment and joy, he appointed me head of the Federal News Bureau and with Victor Hinkson, a Barbadian journalist, we opened office within walking distance of the Federal Parliament building in downtown Port of Spain. A stringer continued to be responsible exclusively for Trinidad and Tobago news. Apart from reporting federal news, I wrote an occasional column and all the weekly Sunday Gleaner editorials ritually devoted to the regional scene. Sealy sent me to London in June 1961 along with the Gleaner Political Reporter, Ulric Simmonds, to report the West Indies Federation Conference. Earlier in 1959 he brought me up to Kingston to report the general election that year. On election night I was assigned to cover Premier Norman Manley, a process that was repeated for the 1962 general election. So I was with Norman Manley at the moment of victory in one election and defeat in the other. Sealy asked me to stay on for the independence celebrations. I was rewarded with the plum assignments: the raising of the National Flag, August 5-6 at the National Stadium, the swearing-in of Governor-General Blackburn and the State Opening of Parliament at Gordon House. Sealy never explained to me why I was chosen for these assignments. Once, however, he told me he always had a good reason for whatever he did. He was the best editor I ever worked with, and as an editor in later years, the Trinidad Mirror in the 1962, the Express in the 1970s/80s, the London Weekly Gleaner in the late 1980s, I tried as well as I could to copy the best of his style in the chair. Sealy was a hard man to work for and with. He was a near-tyrant when things went wrong. But he had his gentle side. He sent me a cable of congratulations for my reporting of the Federal Capital Conference between the governments of the United States, the Federation, and Trinidad and Tobago. Alas, with the passage of time and constant movement it has gone missing. I write this as it is one of journalism's tragedies so little is known of the work of outstanding regional journalists outside their home territory. Sealy is virtually unknown in Trinidad and Tobago with the departure of most of his contemporaries. I know of no one writing a comprehensive history of West Indian journalism. Even the Gleaner publication recording the history of the Gleaner makes no mention of its historic venture into regional journalism at the time of the West Indies Federation. Perhaps the time is not yet ripe. But it surely must come." File
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