Dear Editor,

I met John Maxwell in the

1970s when he ventured into representational politics. John was the last of the high-profile candidates the People’s National Party fielded in the Kingston Western Constituency in the 1970s before the constituency boundary was changed to include Fletchers’ Land which was a part of the Kingston Central Constituency.

John had a vision for Western Kingston but the electorate decided to stick with the incumbent. I am not sure how Western Kingston would have been transformed under his leadership if he had won the seat. Would he have got the support of his party?

John was a no-nonsense person and believed that the country should invest in the youths as they would be the adults of tomorrow. He worked tirelessly to preserve Jamaica’s environment and wrote tirelessly on the Falmouth redevelopment and what could have been destruction of the Cockpit Country. He fought tirelessly to stop the PNP government from building houses on Hope Gardens lands.

John wrote passionately about Haiti and its people and the injustices meted out to them by the United States and France. He believed that Father Jean-Bertrand Aristide was forced out of Haiti because he tried to improve the life of the poor. John will be missed as a columnist in the Sunday Observer. I used to make it a point of duty to read his column every Sunday.

The last time I saw John was in October in the parking lot of the Jamaica Pegasus Hotel when I stopped my vehicle to allow him and his wife to cross. He gave me a big “thank you”.

John’s death is a serious loss to journalism in Jamaica and to environmental matters.

No one is indispensable but John is irreplaceable.

Rest well, friend. Your legacy lives on and I salute you.

Joseph M Cornwall

tranquillityfh@yahoo.com