Well-known Jamaican theatre personality George Carter died in Raleigh, North Carolina, last Saturday during the mammoth snowstorm that pounded the United States east coast and which has been blamed for at least 45 deaths.

Carter, popularly known as ‘Mr C’, would have celebrated his 100th birthday on April 5 and was said to have been making plans for his next visit to Jamaica to mark that milestone, as well as his contribution to the arts and the co-operative credit union movement in Jamaica and the Caribbean in which he played a founding role.

The

Jamaica Observer was told that Carter, who had retired to Florida with members of his family, was visiting Raleigh, where his eldest son, Dr Denis Carter, lives.

During the visit Carter’s hosts were affected by a power outage and were moving to another location when he took ill in the vehicle in which he was travelling. He reached the hospital but did not survive, the

Observer was told.

His passing makes him the first known Jamaican casualty of last weekend’s near record-breaking snowstorm, which disrupted life from the Gulf Coast to New England.

Carter, a dedicated member of the Jamaica cultural arts development scene, began making his contribution to that sector in the 1940s with his association with the Pantomime.

He served the sector until 2001, when he retired as manager and lighting expert for the Little Theatre Movement (LTM), and the celebrated national pantomime, now marking its 75th production.

Carter also served a number of other cultural groups, among them the National Dance Theatre Company.

In 2011, the Jamaican Government invested him with the Order of Distinction (Commander class) for his contribution to theatre.

A

Jamaica Information Service (JIS) story on Carter in 2011 reported that after he graduated from St George’s College he enrolled in several electroplating firms to upgrade his technical skills. He started his own electroplating business during the Second World War, under the patronage of Father George Blatchford, a scientist who taught at St George’s.

He told

JIS that he taught technical theatre at Edna Manley College and was founder of the School of Drama, which was stimulated through the LTM. The school was later transferred to the Jamaica Cultural Training Centre, presently Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performing Arts, in 1976.

Carter also lectured at the Extra-mural Department, now the Philip Sherlock Centre for the Creative Arts at the University of the West Indies.