Lessons from the departed

Martin Henry, Contributor

In quick succession, two iconic titans of Jamaica (or should that be titanic icons?) have laid off life's armour and gone to their rest in grand old age.

Maurice Facey departed on April 2, at age 87. Olive Lewin followed on April 10, at age 85. And across the Atlantic, the Iron Lady and handbagger Margaret Thatcher, prime minister of Great Britain between 1979 and 1990, passed away on April 9 at age 87.

Their lives have changed their world.

Maurice Facey was already 37 when Jamaica became an independent nation in 1962; Olive Lewin, 35. They were children of the colonial era, a dying breed. Their contributions to nation-building have been enormous. The nation has not lived up to their dreams as young adults in their 30s at Independence.

Facey was a builder in more ways than one. The obits are replete with his vast accomplishments in business. Much less has been said about his quiet work in philanthropy and in the arts and culture. For years, his family ran the Mill Press, headed by his storied wife, Valerie. The Mill Press specialised in putting out fine glossy books on aspects of Jamaican culture. Their home, the Mill at Manor Park, was more quietly another Drumblair for the arts - and without the politics, of course. I remember fondly the launch of Morris Cargill's collection of his columns there with the Faceys being busy, humble and gracious hosts. Their daughter is the celebrated sculptor Laura Facey-Cooper.

The National Gallery of Jamaica's tribute says, "Maurice Facey was a significant patron and champion of the arts in Jamaica." He chaired the committee established by Prime Minister Michael Manley to establish a national gallery and served as chairman of the board twice as well as a regular board member.

Maurice Facey was himself an active art collector and cultural philanthropist. Absolutely my favourite Barrington Watson painting, 'Mother and Child', which evokes strong and sweet memories of my own childhood and mother and is about the same age as I, was donated to the National Gallery by the Cecil Boswell Facey Foundation (named in honour of his father) and Valerie. The foundation has offered several scholarships to the Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performing Arts.

Facey also showed a keen interest in the applied arts, offering scholarships to the University of Technology, Jamaica's Caribbean School of Architecture and championing modernisation and improvement of architectural standards. UTech awarded him a doctoral degree, honoris causa.

REAL ESTATE LEGACY

Mr Facey, whose death notice posted by his family appeared as a couple of column inches in the classifieds, has left a massive legacy in concrete and steel and in business leadership.

Through the Pan-Jamaican Group, the Facey family played a significant role in the building and development of commercial and residential real estate in Kingston.

"He is responsible for the construction of a number of landmarks in Kingston, including the Victoria Mutual building, The Courtleigh Hotel, the Scotiabank building in downtown Kingston, Manor Park Plaza and the Abbey Court Apartments at the corner of Trafalgar and Hope roads," the PSOJ said. And Maurice Facey is a father of New Kingston.

The PSOJ noted that Facey founded, led or invested in a number of other companies.

With the likes of Carlton Alexander of GraceKennedy and Company, Maurice Facey was a founding member of the PSOJ in 1976. The PSOJ adopted the slogan 'Free Enterprise and Watch Jamaica Grow' at a time when enterprise wasn't all that free. He was inducted into the PSOJ Hall of Fame in 2000, and before that was conferred with the Order of Jamaica in 1988.

While billions of dollars were parked in government paper at the Bank of Jamaica, earning safe and fat interest, and growth in the Jamaican economy was poor and sickly, Facey's money was outa road doing business under very difficult economic conditions.

While Facey was building New Kingston and Manor Park, political violence and government neglect were smashing up downtown Kingston. One of his distinguished contributions to the country is his work with the Kingston Restoration Company, of which he was founding chairman.

Having poured his life into nation-building, when he could have retreated to the quiet enjoyment of old wealth and privilege, Maurice Facey died not giving up on Jamaica.

FOLK ICON

As documentalist and the founder of the Jamaican Folk Singers in 1967, Olive Lewin was the queen of Jamaican folk music. "I consider her the icon of Jamaican folk music," says Edward Seaga, who as minister of development and welfare in charge of culture recruited her during the Bustamante Independence Government in the 1960s.

But Olive Lewin was much more. She was a trained musician and musicologist, having formally studied at one of the world's premier music schools - the Royal Academy of Music in Britain. Dr Lewin understood the importance of music in education as an instrument of discipline, enculturation, and transformation.

She was herself a music teacher and worked through music for the rehabilitation of incarcerated persons. If only we would adopt on a national scale this profound understanding of the power of music! Music, never strong in the first instance, has languished in the schools. A cacophony of noise in popular music has replaced the sweet harmony, melody and rhythm of traditional Jamaican folk music and the earlier forms of modern Jamaican pop music.

One of my happiest memories of high school is of the music classes with a young American Peace Corps volunteer teacher who exposed us to everything from Linstead Market to Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker Suite. Happily, with a little assistance from Dad, my own children have developed an appreciation for both classical and folk music. We have enjoyed many concerts by the Jamaican Folk Singers.

Olive Lewin spent her life not just performing and teaching, but documenting Jamaican folk music and oral history.

Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller briskly said in her tribute: "Dr Lewin spearheaded the Jamaica Memory Bank project in the 1980s, undertaking the task of recording, transcribing and preserving traditional stories for the benefit of future generations."

Chronically starved of resources, particularly after the cultural Prime Minister Edward Seaga left Jamaica House, if the Memory Bank is still alive at all, it must be as ailing as its founding director in her last few years.

In the early 1990s when I led a UNDP/GOJ project for strengthening national capacity in science and technology for development, I had opportunity to interact with the Memory Bank and with Olive Lewin. The project wanted research and documentation of folk medicinal herbal knowledge as a starting point for scientific investigation which could lead to innovations for commercial products. The Manley West and Albert Lockhart-formulations from ganja for the treatment of glaucoma and asthma had come from this source. New medicines from folk herbal knowledge are now a multibillion-dollar segment of the pharmaceutical industry.

A WOMAN CONVICTED

People threw parties to celebrate Margaret Thatcher's passing. A catchphrase in world news was 'she was a polarising figure'. And, indeed, the Iron Lady was. She was a great champion of free enterprise, democracy and reducing the size of government. Even the Labour Party which she 'manfully' helped to keep in the political wilderness for 18 years was forced to adopt elements of Thatcherism, as New Labour, to escape the exile.

"Very few leaders get to change not only the political landscape of their country but of the world. Margaret was such a leader. Her global impact was vast," said Tony Blair, whose term as Labour prime minister from 1997-2007 he acknowledged owed a debt to the former leader of his Conservative opponents.

"Some of the changes she made in Britain were, in certain respects at least, retained by the 1997 Labour government, and came to be implemented by governments around the world," Blair frankly acknowledged.

Maggie Thatcher and her pal Ronald Reagan changed the world, whatever the critics might say. This is the consistent testimony of world leaders with whom she did business.

Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, whose good relations with Thatcher played a part in ending the Cold War, said she would live on in "memory and in history", while Helmut Kohl, the father of Germany's 1990 reunification, praised her "love of freedom".

Despite deep controversies over her role in ending apartheid, "Thatcher did more to release Nelson Mandela out of prison than any of the other hundreds of anti-apartheid committees, in Europe," Pik Botha, the last foreign minister of the apartheid regime, has said.

F.W. de Klerk, the last apartheid-era president, said that Thatcher, whom he described as a friend, was "a steadfast critic of apartheid". He said she had a better grasp of the complexities and realities of South Africa than many of her contemporaries. "She exerted more influence in what happened in South Africa than any other political leader who at that stage was in the international political stage." He further stated that Thatcher "correctly believed" that more could be achieved through constructive engagement with his government than international sanctions and isolation of the South African government.

Love her, hate her, Thatcher, like Reagan, had great clarity of vision and fixity of purpose, the marks of a great leader. And what many people don't know was the profound influence that the Adam Smith Institute, a free-market think tank, had upon her. Jamaican leaders are yet to display such clarity of vision and fixity of purpose or to benefit so extensively from organised and disciplined policy thinking.

Martin Henry is a communication specialist. Email feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com and medhen@gmail.com.