The Desmond Allen Interviews – part one

Veteran journalist Lloyd B Smith is today celebrating twin milestones — 50 years in journalism and 45 years as founder of the Western Mirror newspaper. Following is a compelling two-part re-telling of Lloyd B’s early journey, a tale of hardships overcome and courage to face down the odds, as first published in the 2005 award-winning series, The Desmond Allen Interviews.

It’s amazing. Whether people like or dislike Lloyd B Smith, they read or listen to him for the same reason: They want to see what he is going to say next. And the same acerbic criticism which never fails to draw blood earns him, at one and the same time, the disdain of his detractors and the delight of his admirers.

In Montego Bay, Lloyd B strides across the western city as if he owns the “Bay”. It’s a measure of the status he has achieved that when an enthusiastic talk show caller, named Prince, dubbed him The Governor, the epithet immediately stuck. Refer to ‘The Governor’ of Montego Bay and everyone knows you are talking about this courageous journalist whose fearless pen pricks like a thorn to afflict the comfortable but just as easily oozes words to comfort the afflicted.

The evolution of Lloyd Barnes Smith is a journey worthy of documentation. There are contradictions aplenty, like the dramatic switch from flirtation with the 1970s politics of Michael Manley’s People’s National Party (PNP) to the ill-fated run for Edward Seaga’s Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) in the 1997 General Election. He would bless the day he chose integrity over opportunism when political toughs offered him the deadly service of the gun against his opponents. And there was the speculative appearance on the launch platform of Bruce Golding’s National Democratic Movement (NDM).

He still wonders whether he did right when he set himself up as one man against the world by calling out the names of MoBay bigwigs rumoured to be behind the dark episode styled the Street People Saga. And when first, the British owner, and then the American manager, in turn, abandoned
The Beacon newspaper, Lloyd B would seize the opportunity to etch his name in the annals of Jamaican newspaper history.

That life-changing struggle to save The Beacon, now renamed the Western Mirror, has defined him since. He’ll not quickly forget the low moments when bankers turned him away with a mean frown — a stark but sad reminder to him of a tight-fisted father who switched off the lights as he studied for GCE O’ level exams.

This weekend, as the Mirror contemplates moving into its own spanking new building, with new colour presses and a new attitude — worlds apart now from the decrepit offices at Strand Street and Corner Lane — Lloyd B recommits to the old message that he’ll never veer from telling the story of the Jamaican people, as he sees it. And in typical Lloyd B fashion: Who don’t like it can bite it!

There are two Lloyd B’s who were born on May 20, 1947 at St James Public Hospital, now Cornwall Regional. Well, not quite. The journalist we know arrived 15 minutes after his twin brother, Joseph Smith. The twins were delivered by the noted Dr Herbert Morrison. His three sisters are Jean Smith, Eulie Smith and Norma Bowen, now Daley, who was born before the marriage. Their parents, Justin Smith and Ethelda Maude Smith nee Genuas, were living at Mt Salem, a suburb of Montego Bay.

Lloyd B’s first recollection is of the estate house in which they lived at Fairfield near Granville, about two miles from the city. His father was a supervisor on Barnett Estates and he recalls that they lived across from the Busha — the man in charge of the estate which was in sugar cane. His mother, a housewife, hails from St Elizabeth and has Irish antecedents.

The infant Lloyd also has vivid recollections of the terror that was Hurricane Charlie which slammed into Jamaica in 1951 when he was five years old. Time has not erased the memory, he says, of the dreadful night when he and his parents watched in horror as the nearby Barnett River, swollen by the advancing flood, angrily threatened to overflow its banks and inundate homes. He can still hear the awful eerie howl of those ominous winds that flattened everything in sight. Thankfully, though, his home was spared.

“For some reason, I remember everything as if it happened yesterday,” Lloyd B says. But later he would be shy in the extreme, afraid even to enter a lighted room.

He went to primary school at age seven, but was well ahead because his maternal grandmother, Adina Genaus, then living at 44 Railway Lane, was a lover of reading and spoke good English, which she taught to Lloyd and her other grandchildren. She insisted they read the Bible every night before going to bed, pronouncing words properly and knowing how to spell them. She also taught them basic math.

He used to visit her, walking from Fairfield to Railway Lane across the Barnett bridge which he greatly feared and which gave him nightmares. When he attended Montego Bay Infant School, he went to his grandmother for lunch. There were also other terrors for the young Lloyd B. Adults delighted in driving fear into the hearts of the children by telling them scary tales of the “Black Heart Man” and the horrors he would visit upon them if they should stray and be caught by him.

From infant school he went to Montego Bay Boys School, which later became Corinaldi Primary. The headmaster was no less than Howard Cooke, who would in time be a minister of education and governor general of Jamaica. He remembers Cooke as a tall, imposing man who was very strict and always carried a cane.

“Every Thursday he would go around to the classes, asking students to recite their time-tables or something else. It was my turn when he came to our class. I was so terrified that the words just would not come out and I got a few strokes from his cane,” Lloyd B recounts. But Teacher Cooke, as he was affectionately known, took a lot of interest in the students, especially the less well off, he says.

In 1958 he passed his Common Entrance Examination and went to Cornwall College (CC), at the time the premier boys’ school in the western end of the island. It was a time of great excitement and pride for his mother and the Irwin community where they were now living. He was the only one from Irwin who had passed.

His mother delighted in seeing her son wear the proud Cornwall College epaulette, a symbol of prestige for the family. Unfortunately, his father took no pride in his achievement. He was socialised to believe that boys that age should go and work, and he “was not for this book thing”. When the family got electricity his father insisted that all lights be out by a certain hour, forcing him to study by the comparatively dim light of a “Home Sweet Home” lamp that his mother had bought for him. In one painful incident his father switched off the lights as he was revising the night before a GCE O’ level exam. Lloyd B believes this is responsible for his near-sightedness.

But things were to get worse. When it was time to pay the GCE exam fees, his father refused to provide the money. Realising that he was serious, Mrs Smith got desperate. She was a housewife and had no money of her own but she was determined that her son must sit his exams. Finally, she came up with a solution. She would sell her prized sow and from the proceeds, pay Lloyd B’s exam fees.

“People ask why I am so close to my mother. This is why. She was always there, always supporting me,” he explains. With time, he would learn to forgive his father.

He also remembers hitchhiking to school on the sugar cane trucks or frequently walking to school from Irwin and back, about three miles away, whenever he missed one of the four buses which plied the route. At Cornwall he used to love to write essays, and in 1964 won an islandwide essay contest in the now-defunct Harmony In the Home competition. The essay prize was a weekend at Half Moon Hotel, at the time a mind-blowing experience as the perception was that only the rich and famous stayed at that upscale hotel. He was accompanied by his English teacher and his wife and stayed in a luxury villa, worlds apart from the estate house in which he once lived.

Lloyd B was featured in The Beacon, one of the early community papers published out of MoBay. The Gleaner newspaper carried the essay, marking the first time Lloyd B was published. But there was a great deal more to come, though nobody knew it then.

He went to Cornwall with easily recognised names such as Dr Karl Blythe; Steve Bucknor; Allie McNab; Justice Howard Cooke, son of the governor general; Kingsley Thomas of Highway 2000 and NIBJ fame; George Thomas, now a top MoBay lawyer; J Paul Morgan of the Office of Utilities Regulation; and Dr Hector Robinson, among others.

Lloyd B’s nickname there was Choco, short for chocolate, which he got from attending Spanish class during which his teacher, Mr Cowan, loved to hear him recite the phrase, “Mama hace chocolate” (Mama makes chocolate). The name followed him to teachers’ college in Mandeville.

Lloyd B had cherished the notion that he could become a journalist, and stated it during fourth form at CC. He was a little put off when the legendary headmaster, Sammy Barrett, laughed hard at the idea so he decided he would become a teacher, his second love.

He had high regard for Barrett, remembering how he had given him a ‘permanent excuse slip’ so he could be admitted through the school gates when he was frequently late, on account of having to walk to school. And he had been a troublemaker of sorts at CC, for which the cane was often taken to him. He argued a lot with the teachers, questioning many of the things they said and taught. Some teachers found him annoying.

Lloyd B thinks that the pressure he was coming under from boys back in Irwin, to “skull school and go stone mango tree and roam with them”, was partially responsible for his troublemaker status. But on reflection now, he notes the sad fact that “none of those boys had made it in life”.

Barrett sat at his desk one morning, thinking about Lloyd B Smith. The boy had good potential. He was bright and talented, he thought. But he could not understand why he gave so much trouble and seemed to like playing truant. Several teachers had complained that he questioned everything, as if he knew more than the teachers themselves, and his name was a staple on the detention list.

Barrett had taken pity on him and given him a permanent excuse slip because he often walked to school from home so far away. He did not want to have to expel him. As he tried to figure out what was happening to the boy, Barrett decided he would give him one more chance. He sent for his mother, and before her gave Lloyd B “a serious talking to”.

“I made a dramatic turnaround after that talk,” Lloyd B relates. “I realised that I could have been expelled, but Mr Barrett had decided to give me a chance.” So although Barrett had laughed the journalism idea out of him, he would remember that after he gained prominence at the Western Mirror, the former headmaster and his wife had invited him to dinner to commend him on his fine achievement.

“Tears came to my eyes,” Lloyd B confesses.

During A’ level studies he found he had great interest in philosophy, acquainting himself with the works of luminaries like Aristotle; Socrates; Bertrand Russell, the famed agnostic; and Sigmund Freud. But after the exams he quickly realised that the finances of his family were tight and they would not be able to send him on to tertiary education. Luckily for him, at that very time the Anglican Church, under Bishop Percival Gibson, decided to open Mandeville Teachers’ College, now Church Teachers’ College, in Manchester. After devotions one morning Suffragan Bishop of Mandeville Benjamin Vaughn came to Cornwall on a recruitment drive for the college which he was asked to spearhead.

Lloyd B was grateful to hear that he would not have to pay tuition or boarding, and jumped at the chance. He had to travel to Mandeville for the interview. It was still dark at 4:00 am on the day of the interview. In the distance, he heard the familiar blare of the horn of the ‘Confidence’ bus, and grabbed the bottle torch which he used to wave down the bus. At the interview was a six-member selection panel. One of the courses would be philosophy so they asked him to define philosophy. Lloyd B not only defined philosophy, he strutted his stuff on all the great philosophers. One man thought he was showing off and they clashed. At the end, Lloyd B swore there was no way he would get through. But he got the call, becoming the very first student to be accepted!

It was a brave new world at Mandeville Teachers’ College, a former hotel with a swimming pool. The town was unusually cold and inhabited by a lot of wealthy people, he noted at the time. Life would be good to him there, and he remembers quality lecturers such as Dr Franklin Johnstone, the Rhodes scholar “over whom all the girls were excited”. Lloyd B also developed a little reputation as a Romeo on campus, famous for his love letters for which other young men would pay him. The headmaster was Gerald Jones, the well known Welsh poet who, along with his wife, would have significant influence on Lloyd B.

College cured him of the fear of entering a lighted room, and his shyness generally. He developed a love for drama and remembers acting as Polonius in Shakespeare’s play Hamlet. The play was very eventful, he recalls. As it went, Hamlet was to thrust his sword in a clump of bushes from where Polonius was eavesdropping on him, killing him on the spot. Lloyd B’s character was to let out a blood-curdling scream, signifying that the sword had found its deadly mark. Unknown to Lloyd B, there was a nest of wasps in the bushes.

“As Hamlet thrust the sword I fell back into the wasp nest and was severely stung. The scream that the audience heard was actually real,” Lloyd B jokes now.

That dramatic incident was to be the forerunner of a long engagement with the theatre, at the height of which he would be crowned with the Actor Boy’s Best Actor award for his leading role in Basil Dawkins’ Feminine Justice in 2001. To cop that award he had to beat out theatre biggies like Oliver Samuel, Charles Hyatt, and Glen Campbell, who were also nominated that year. A proud Montego Bay appointed him its theatrical arts ambassador for being the first to have won that acclaim outside of Kingston.

But even as Lloyd B revelled in the glow of acclamation by the city fathers, the clouds of despair were gathering. The same people who had clamoured for him would treat him as the enemy after he named them in the infamous Street People case.

Tomorrow: Montego Bay turns against ‘The Governor’

SMITH… celebrating 50 years in journalism and 45 years as founder of the Western Mirror newspaper