Reporters, perhaps for no special reason other than the nature of their jobs, get to be among the chosen ones to be afforded a ringside seat as human history unfolds in all its colour and drama. From this vantage point, their lives become interwoven with the destiny of men, great and small.

And yet there might have been a special reason why Michael Sharpe was chosen to become a vessel of history and a tenacious witness to the deeds, fair and foul, of his countrymen. Who's to know why, but the hand of fate had determined that Michael Anthony Sharpe must record, for now and posterity, the uncertain path of a nascent nation and people.

SHARPE. his story is definitively a reporter's story

From his pen or microphone, over time, would come stories of courage and cowardice, intrigue and excitement, tragedy and triumph. An assassination of a prime minister in Grenada, a failed coup in Trinidad and Tobago, rare moments with notorious names like Joel Andem, Jim Brown and Sandokhan are among the highpoints etched forever in memory.

And there are career crises too, like the time when his popular Sharpe Talk night show was yanked by the late general manager, Hugh Crosskill Jnr, and the irate calls from politicians wanting to influence his work as a journalist.

But today, among the most recognised faces in Jamaica, Sharpe is invited into the most private moments of his compatriots in his role as co-anchor with Dorraine Samuels on Television Jamaica's nightly Prime Time News.

The glare and glamour of the television lights mark the long way now from inner-city Bay Farm Road, Kingston where he grew up, and behind him, too, is the hard-fought battle with frightening epilepsy.

The Michael Sharpe story is definitively a reporter's story. Reporters call their assigned area of specialisation a beat. For Michael Sharpe, the beat is called life. And there has never been a dull moment.

Trauma at H-W-T Primary

Scebert Sharpe was a builder and his wife, Dorothy Sharpe nee Anderson, a housewife when they had their fourth of seven children and named him Michael, on January 9, 1956. The family was living at Whitfield Avenue at the time of Michael's birth but soon after bought a house at Bay Farm Road.

His siblings are: Judith Sharpe now Mitchell, an insurance executive; Jennifer Sharpe, married Williams, a teacher; Carol Sharpe now Moore, a lawyer; Arlene Sharpe, a doctor; and Carl Sharpe, an Information Technology specialist.

The Sharpe home was typically Christian. The area, called Waltham Gardens, was then a quiet, low-middle-income community where the daily drone of the Jamaica Omnibus Service (JOS) frequently provided the only distraction.

Daddy Sharpe rode a bicycle to and from work and Michael recalls having to walk up to Molynes Road to get a bus to Half-Way-Tree Primary School which he attended after leaving a community preparatory school. From an early age, Michael became aware of and grew increasingly impressed with how bright his sisters were. "They kept us boys on our toes," he admits.

All the Sharpe children attended H-W-T Primary, which was then located across from Half-Way-Tree Park (now Mandela Park). Michael remembers walking home from school with his good friends David Simpson and Richard Gordon, both of whom lived in his community.

He has vivid, often fond memories of the school, of the disciplinarian of a headmaster, Mr Pusey, and his teacher, Miss James "who moulded us in terms of discipline and seriousness". There comes a time of awakening and Michael got his at play at school one day when he was slammed into a post, remembering the blood and the panic that followed.

He was taken to a nearby clinic where he received two stitches. The scar remains today, a reminder of the dangers of boyhood, he notes.
And there would also be the terror and trauma of watching a bleeding schoolmate, a boy of Indian descent, whose leg was chopped off by an errant sheet of zinc which flew off the school bathroom.

That was followed by another dreadful incident in which another boy, Basil Cummings of Barbican, had a bus run over his foot, crushing it beyond recovery. As a boy Michael was deeply traumatised by these events but in a way they were signposts to a future time, preparing him for the often painful twists and turns and the blood and gore of a reporter's life.

Michael enjoyed spending his holidays with his maternal grandparents, Roland Anderson and Fredericka Moncrieffe at Mosley Hall in St Ann. He loved to roam the bushes and splash in the river, pick pimento and cut cane with grandfather who was a medium-sized farmer whom he remembers as "a tall, gangling man with blue eyes and a man made of Sheffield steel", so strong he was.

His grandparents were also bakers and Michael enjoyed kneading the dough, but he especially liked the fact that he could get his own duck-shaped bread when the baking was over. His grandmother operated a shop where the village folk would congregate and discuss the day's events.

He formed the impression that his grandparents carried some social weight from the constant visits and discussions. The people took a liking to Michael and predicted that he would "come to something in life".

C'Bar a dream come true

He won a half-scholarship at the Common Entrance Exam and went to Calabar High School at Red Hills Road in 1967. The headmaster was Walter Foster, followed by Arthur J Edgar. Some of the boys at Calabar during Michael's years included recognisable names like Peter Moses of Citibank fame; Dr Wesley Hughes, now director-general of the Planning Institute of Jamaica (PIOJ); Tweedsmuir Atkinson, who was his headboy; John Thompson, later an attorney-at-law, and Dan Graham, a future neurosurgeon.

From as far back as he could remember Sharpe had always wanted to go to Calabar, to wear the famous green and black, and when he arrived it was a dream come true. "It was sheer joy when I got there. It was good fun and very challenging for me," he recounts. But he would also remember Calabar for something far from fun.

There were no warning signs that Michael could put his finger on. He was doing fairly well at Calabar, looking to graduate and join his parents who, by now, were residing in the United States. He was living in the care of a maternal cousin he called Aunt Vera, who had moved to the house at Bay Farm Road.

One night as he lay in bed, the cruel illness called epilepsy struck. Michael was chewing on his own tongue, thrashing about and hurting himself. Aunt Vera would sometimes be alerted when he fell off the bed and she took him for treatment to Dr John Hall at the Kingston Public Hospital.

The epilepsy affected his schoolwork and it began to show in poorer grades. "The attacks grew in frequency and it was enough to disrupt my sense of balance," he recalls. He was only allowed to sit the GCE O' level exam because deputy headmaster John Thompson knew of the studious boy he was before the attack.

He had also been an energetic participant in extra-curricular activities like the drama club and the school choir where he was part of a quartet with people like Leo Brown, "a great singer and sportsperson". But his O' level results were disastrous, as he could only manage to pass English Language and Art, not a bright note on which to leave a school that he loved.

Journalism beckons

Sharpe's parents had filed for him and it was planned that he would join them in the States in December of 1974. In the intervening summer, Harry Anderson of The Gleaner hired him to work as a sub-editor. That was during the final days of the great Theodore Sealy.

He recalls, too, that the newspaper was making the transition to a political editor-in-chief in the late Hector Wynter, a former chairman of the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP). He worked with the likes of Ken Allen, Calvin Bowen, Jack Anderson, Carl Wint, Canute James, Junior Dowie, Neville Toyloy among others.

During the brief sojourn at The Gleaner, Sharpe spotted a sub-editor named Velma Reid, a delectable young woman who stole his heart and he pursued her to marriage. She was older in journalism and introduced him around. Sharpe says the journalist who had the greatest influence on him was Terry Smith, who was then at the now-defunct Jamaica Daily News.

"Smith told me that whatever happened, I must kill my critics with excellence and I have never forgotten it." By the time he left The Gleaner, journalism had made a conquest.

In the winter of 1974, his plane landed in deep snow on US soil and sadness swept over him when he realised the sun was behind his back, Sharpe says. To make matters worse, on that first night of his arrival, the heater in his parents' home had broken down and everyone had to huddle together to keep warm until it could be fixed the next day.

For him, the States represented the reunification of his family. And Sharpe admires the country for the vast opportunities available. He can't quite see with the people who go there and get involved in things like drugs and ruin their lives.

"Bob Marley sings 'In the abundance of water the fool is thirsty'," Sharpe notes, saying he had seen the many success stories of migrants, including that of his parents. "They had bought a house, with only their Christian faith and trust as collateral."

He got a job as a filing clerk at Manufacturers Hanover Bank, with a plan to go back to school to do journalism. To matriculate, he did some courses at Hunter College in Manhattan, New York, saying it was then that he realised how good the quality of his education was at Calabar, and started the degree programme.

Not surprisingly, he was chosen to be the editor of the school's yearbook and photographic editor for the school newspaper, for which he also wrote, drawing on the Gleaner experience. President Richard Nixon's Watergate affair was the rage at the time and it provided much fodder for the journalism students.

Sharpe says he took from the course the view that investigative journalism is more about "Deep Throat", a source who is prepared to give the information, than about a reporter's digging.

"That (the willing source) has worked to some degree in Jamaica but one understands the general reluctance in a small country such as ours," he adds. "So I don't buy into it when someone says glibly we need more investigative journalism."

He made good friends with some Caribbean students, particularly from Guyana and Trinidad and Tobago, remembering how he and some of them, including Eddie Garraway from T&T had pledged to return to their home countries to work and serve.

He completed the degree in four years, working and studying full-time, expressing gratitude to his sisters, especially Jennifer and Marva and his brother, Carl "a quiet math brains", who helped him with his studies. This was 1979, and it was time to come home.

Sorry, no vacancy

Sharpe didn't even bother to listen to the people who were telling him that going home at the time was foolishness. The country was embroiled in a vicious ideological battle between the conservative Opposition JLP of Edward Seaga and the ruling democratic socialist People's National Party (PNP) of Michael Manley.

People were running in the other direction and did he know what he was doing, they asked. He applied to the media houses, including Radio Jamaica, hoping to capitalise on some experience he had gained at the college radio station in New York and remembering how he had admired the number one disc jock, Don Topping.

Winston Ridgard was the programmes manager and his audition was taped by Sugar Ralph McKenzie, now his good friend. But his first disappointment came when all the letters of response said 'sorry, no vacancy'.

It was to the British High Commission that he turned for his first job as an information officer. They sent him to Scotland for orientation and he described it as a wonderful two weeks of his life, although his hotel room at Tottenham Court Road was robbed and his money stolen.

He spent about four years at the High Commission and when they cut staff, went to join Lennie Little-White's Media Mix outfit as an assistant account executive. He remembers working alongside Sonia Mills, wife of Ambassador Don Mills, and Chappie St Juste.

From there, Sharpe went to the state-owned Jamaica Information Service (JIS) which Seaga had given back its old name, from the Agency for Public Information (API), after he took power in 1980. Ken Chaplin was his immediate boss and there were others there like Ian Boyne, Clive Bryan, Veronica 'Sweetie' Campbell and Paulette Williams.

Sharpe was given the Overseas Department to run, and the national security ministry, with Winston Spaulding, as his beat. His interest in radio still alive, Sharpe voiced a few radio commercials for the JIS, as well as some radio plays produced by Alwyn Scott. That led to some pieces on JIS TV.

A reporter's story

Gloria Lannaman, a very formidable playwright who had become general manager of the Jamaica Broadcasting Corporation (JBC), the state-run radio and television station, heard Sharpe and fell in love with his voice.

He accepted her invitation to join the JBC, recalling that his first editor was Lloyd Hamilton, and among the people already there were Owen James, Anthony Miller, Hillary Lannaman (the general manager's daughter), Tony Patel, Charles Lewin and Tino Geddes.

Within weeks of Sharpe's arrival at the JBC, the Grenada revolution exploded and he hit the ground running. He had been covering a Caribbean Community (Caricom) meeting in Barbados, supported by cameraman Reuben Hue, and soundman Ruddy Mattison, when the news hit that Prime Minister Maurice Bishop had been overthrown in a coup by hardline left-wingers in his New Jewel Movement party. This was October 1983.

The events in Grenada triggered one emergency meeting in Guyana and another in Trinidad and Tobago, attended by heads, including Seaga and John Compton of St Lucia. RJR's David Ebanks was dispatched to Trinidad. From the way the prime ministers gathered in Bridgetown were huddling, Sharpe's news sense told him something onerous was at hand.

He kept his ears to the ground and soon enough he learnt that Jamaican soldiers, headed by Colonel Allan Douglas, were en route to Grenada, by way of Barbados. By then, the heads of government there were Tom Adams of Barbados, Eugenia Charles of Dominica, George Chambers of Trinidad, and Forbes Burnham of Guyana.

Sharpe was constrained not to report on the movement of the soldiers, in order not to endanger the mission, particularly because no one knew how Cuba, which was embroiled in the Grenada mayhem, would react.

By nightfall, the Grantley Adams Airport in Bridgetown was thickly populated by huge United States transport planes and war machinery. Barbados was the staging point for a US-led invasion of Grenada, to put down the Bernard Coard-led coup. Sharpe spotted Anthony Abrahams and Neville Gallimore on the ground.

Covering the invasion would be challenging. Ann Sabo of the US was brought in to handle information, trotting out claims that the treachery in Grenada could easily have happened in Jamaica and that the US had come to save the region from communism. Sharpe wanted to report only the facts and was not immediately liked by Sabo's outfit.

When a group of journalists was being chosen to be embedded on a US military plane going into Grenada, Sharpe was told only his cameraman could go, 'because of limited space'.

"I remember Tony Abrahams putting his hand on my shoulder and giving me the message in a very condescending way. It was very painful for me," Sharpe recounts. He took mental note that a group of US journalists had hired a boat and found their way into Grenada.

Keeping his eyes open for any opportunity to get to the tiny eastern Caribbean island, Sharpe hit pay dirt when he found another US plane going and manoeuvred his way onto it, unknown to Sabo, Abrahams and the others of the outfit.

"In Grenada, I smelled the stench of rotting corpses and saw the devastation wrought by the fighting. I recalled seeing Prime Minister Seaga travelling in a helicopter.

He had come in his capacity as commander-in-chief of the Jamaican army to visit the Jamaican troops who were there to provide support services for the fighting US soldiers," Sharpe reflects. He spent three weeks covering the assignment.

That assignment led to another big media moment. A Carl Stone poll had shown a temporary reversal in the popular sentiment, from PNP to JLP and, capitalising on the Grenada situation, Seaga called a snap election in Jamaica for December 15, 1983. In the style of the great chess masters, Manley decided to boycott the elections, saying that Seaga had breached a solemn promise not to go to the polls on a flawed voters list which disenfranchised some 150,000 people.

At the East Street headquarters of the National Workers Union (NWU), Sharpe ensconced himself and heard Manley state adamantly he would not lead the PNP into the elections.

That would lead to Jamaica's first one-party Parliament.
And he praises Seaga for opting for the idea of having independent senators in place of an Opposition-appointed one, saying that the persons chosen did Jamaica proud and made the Senate the most vibrant ever.

They included Lloyd Barnett, Professor Errol Miller, Sam Reid, Charles Sinclair and Barbara Blake-Hanna, among others. And he thinks the PNP did well in the circumstances with their series of People's Forum or "people's parliament" at the Oceana Hotel.

But things at the JBC were not going well for Sharpe. Government ministers were calling and pressuring the editor and the newsroom to do their bidding. Some would complain about how many minutes Manley was given as against a Government minister.

Fancying himself as an independent journalist who would remain true to his training, Sharpe stood his ground. "So it was not difficult for me to leave, despite the lure of television, to go to Radio Jamaica," he remarks.

David Ebanks, Granville Newell, Tino Geddes

This time it was Lester Spaulding, the RJR managing director, who beckoned him to come on over. This was 1984. Tino Geddes by now had gone to RJR as well, and Sharpe saw people there such as Granville Newell, Jennifer Grant, Stan Reynolds, Bobby Fray, David Ebanks, Clifton Segree, Leo Ferguson, Lester Hinds and the late Pauline Little-Gray.

His news editor was Janet Mowatt. Sharpe's main domain was Parliament, where he quickly stamped his authority through the popular feature Inside Gordon House which won him one of two Press Association of Jamaica awards. Many of the politicians did not like how he used to bawl it out every time they were absent from a sitting.

Coup in Trinidad

By 1985 the JLP began to lose popularity and the trade unions staged a massive general strike. Sharpe was on the beat. And he was there to cover the general elections of 1989 which returned Manley and the PNP to power.

The next big assignment came in the sister nation of Trinidad and Tobago. A group of black Muslims had staged a coup against the Government of A N R Robinson, holding the Parliament or 'Red House' at gunpoint. Robinson was shot and several persons were killed. This was early 1990s and Sharpe was dispatched to Port-of-Spain, the capital.

He covered the story from rooftops near the Parliament building, filing from the CLICO insurance offices and witnessed the rebels coming out of the Red House, hands in the air, at the end of the stand-off.

Back home, Sharpe decided that in between reporting he would try his hand at something else that he loved. He hosted a Sunday night jazz show called Jazz Jam, which was to be followed by what Sharpe regards as "four of the most meaningful years of my life".

Following in the footsteps of people like Carlington Sinclair, he became host of the nightly talk show, Sharpe Talk, sandwiched between Leahcim Semaj after midnight and Alan Magnus at dawn.
Sharpe says the programme allowed him to do God's work.

It mobilised huge sums of money to help a long list of worthy causes. He singles out the incident in which three children were mowed down on the road at Montpelier in St James, saying money was pouring in long after he had asked for it to stop, after the target amount was reached and surpassed. The excess money was used to provide scholarships for the siblings of the dead children.

Joel Andem, Jim Brown, Sandokhan

He also recalls Seaga calling to seek his assistance for a constituent with a heart condition. He invited him to the studio, played Luciano's Lord Give Me Strength, and asked Seaga to explain the problem. "The response was so overwhelming that Seaga was moved to tears and he confessed that he was not aware that this kind of thing went on at nights," Sharpe says.

Sharpe Talk came to a sudden jarring end when the new general manager, Hugh Crosskill Jnr, took over and yanked it from air in a broad restructuring of programmes. Sharpe was deeply hurt. But with Megan Thomas, one of his mentors, he started a "Where are they now?" feature and got involved in the training of correspondents, while leading RJR's foray into cyber space and the Internet.

When the RJR Group acquired JBC-TV and renamed it TVJ, he was assigned to head up the newsroom. He started the current affairs show Perspective and later Exposure. A highlight of the show was the time when the notorious Joel Andem, a wanted man, called to refute claims made about him and his gang, after TVJ had shown a first-time-it-was-being done video of gang members in the hills of Papine. Sharpe praises Kevin Savage for his expert editing of the video.

As a reporter, Sharpe had covered other notorious figures like Sandokhan, the modern-day Robin Hood who was killed by cronies in Olympic Gardens, and Lester Lloyd Coke alias Jim Brown, the West Kingston don who died in mysterious circumstances during a fire at the General Penitentiary. One of Sharpe's proudest feathers is the nightly News at Ten, which he hosted before taking over as main anchor for Prime Time News.

He speaks lovingly and gratefully of his second wife, Arlene Allen, who works at Air Jamaica, their 15-year relationship and their two children - Michka, 15 and Michael Sharpe Jr, 13. And the beat goes on.

Next week: Senator A J Nicholson - Dispensing justice with a strong voice and an even hand

Send comments on this interview to desal@cwjamaica.com

Feeding the multitude

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Pepper Pot