Corina Meeks: The great communicator

THE PROFESSIONS of the mind that create products from abstract raw material suffered the most recent in a current series of significant losses with the passing of communications icon Corina Meeks on May 30.

Corina Aurelia Meeks (nee Achong) was born in Port of Spain, Trinidad, on March 9, 1930, the second child and first daughter of Tito Achong, a medical doctor and former mayor of Port of Spain, and Julia Pena. One of eight Achong children, Corina was an outstanding student at St Joseph's Convent and the first female island scholar from Trinidad & Tobago.

She attended McGill University in Montreal, Canada, where she met Charles Meeks of Jamaica, who studied dentistry at McGill. Four years after their 1952 marriage, Corina accompanied Charles to his homeland, where she lived and worked in Kingston for the remainder of her life.

Corina and Charles Meeks produced three offsprings, all of whom have been extraordinarily successful professionals - University of the West Indies (UWI) social sciences Professor Brian Meeks, now director of the Sir Arthur Lewis Institute of Social & Economic Studies; Dr Jeffrey Meeks, orthodontist and president of the Jamaica Dental Association; and UWI Professor Julie Meeks-Gardner, medical researcher and pioneer in the study of early childhood development.

Morning show co-host

Although, previously, she did sterling work as a member of the staff of the Government Public Relations Office under the directorship of the famous A.E.T. Henry, Meeks first became a household name locally when the Jamaica Broadcasting Corporation (JBC) hit the airwaves with their radio broadcasting in June 1959. Early morning listeners woke up to an entertaining and informative programme co-hosted by Charles Hyatt and Meeks.

With such skilled and talented colleagues as Carey Robinson, Hartley Neita, Errol Harvey and Elaine Perkins, at the GPRO, later renamed Jamaica Information Service (JIS), Meeks headed the Publications Department, displaying a mixture of sharp intelligence, creative imagination and openness to other staff members' and freelancers' worthy ideas.

She produced and edited such informative publications as the large comprehensive reference book, Handbook of Jamaica and, on Jamaica's attainment of Independence in 1962, the colourful booklet called Code for National Symbols that educated our people not only on the identity of the symbols but also on the rules of protocol that applied to their use.

Her stocks rose to great heights through her brilliant direction of the communications/public relations campaign in support of the decimalisation of the Jamaican currency in 1969.

After Michael Manley's inauguration as prime minister in March 1972, she was recruited as a special assistant to the prime minister and made a major impact with the efficiency, energy, intelligence, sensitivity and compassion she demonstrated in her handling of citizens' communication with the prime minister.

She was responsible for crafting replies to citizens' pleas especially on matters relating to social and economic needs. She ensured that every one of the innumerable letters to the prime minister was followed by an appropriate and timely response.

Test of mettle

Meeks' next appointment was to prove a stern test of her mettle. She was released from the Office of the Prime Minister in 1976 to become executive director of the Agency for Public Information (API), the rebranded JIS, which was part of the prime minister's portfolio.

There were booby traps lying all over the ground.

Less than two years earlier, the People's National Party (PNP) had reaffirmed its democratic socialist philosophy, first officially proclaimed at the party's annual conference in 1940. Prime Minister Michael Manley had declared the government's democratic socialist commitment in Parliament in November 1974. As the state's information agency, the API was then obliged to convey the Government's messages in a mode that was consistent with its democratic-socialist pledge.

The API, like the JBC, was infiltrated by communist activists and other radical socialists whose rhetoric was more appropriate for a totalitarian brand of socialism than for the democratic model prescribed by the PNP and the government. There was, as a result, ongoing friction between the management and some API journalists who were being manipulated from outside to convey government messages in rhetorical terms that caused or added to confusion about the political orientation of the state.

The extreme leftist leadership of the API Staff Association also campaigned within the agency in terms of an inherent conflict between workers and management, the need for the workers to be protected against injustice meted out by management, and the leadership of the Staff Association being the workers' champions and protectors.

Exemplary worker-manager

The leftists' tactics had little chance of success in view of Meeks' open-door management style, giving all workers easy access to their executive director; her frequent consultations with the personnel officer to ensure that potential grievances were not allowed to fester; her bringing disputing parties together in her presence; and her even-handedness in inquiring into conflicts and arriving at fair and just solutions. The notional division of the staff into categories of management and workers was a failed strategy because the executive director, while being the head of the management, was patently an exemplary worker and inspired her colleagues in management to be similarly industrious, resourceful and productive.

She was witty and humorous, evidently preferred smiling to scowling and was clearly a compassionate and caring person.

Meeks held the national honour of Commander of the Order of Distinction for her outstanding contribution to public relations and to nation building.

A mass thanksgiving will be held today, 3 p.m., at Sts Peter and Paul Roman Catholic Church, St Andrew.