Latest update November 5th, 2024 1:00 AM
Jun 06, 2016 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon
I would say that Dale Andrews is the person from the world of journalism that I have spent more journalistic time with than anyone else in the profession. I will now add to the two memories captured in my column yesterday. I begin with lunch my wife and I had with him at Shanta’s at Camp and New Market Streets. I am extremely awkward to the point of it being a defect in my personality. I am always bumping in to things.
So the attendant brought our food. Dale ordered duck curry and I followed him in that request. Before the food came, the waitress bought our drinks and I spilt mine on the table and it ran in the direction of Dale. He was angrily amused saying, “Freddie, there’s always something with you, maan.” Then the curry came and I spilt my bowl on the table and the gravy with pieces of duck ran straight in the direction of Dale. I will never forget the look at that man’s face. He said; “Freddie you gat problems maan.” My wife too was not amused.
That was the first food incident with Dale. The second one occurred last month at the Kangan (the Monday celebration when meat is served bountifully and liquor flows freely after the Sunday wedding and Hindu ceremony) of Maya, a Kaieteur staffer. Dale and I went the Sunday night to the Kangan; he drove.
Maya’s yard leads straight to the Demerara River from the West Bank village of La Grange. So we sat on a long bench next to the bank of the River. Maya’s brother greeted us and I requested to have some food. As Maya’s brother left, Dale turned to me and said, “Freddie don’t do that when you are with me; don’t ask people for food.”
I was confused since Maya is our friend and her brother knows us. And Hindu weddings are very informal things. But to tell the truth I would have done that at any denominational wedding. By this time, Frankie Wilson from the Sports Department joined us and a serious conversation between the three of us started but I kept bemoaning the absence of Maya’s bother with the food. Dale would have none of it. He suggested umpteen times that I leave Frankie and him and go up front to collect the food because he cannot stand my constant queries of Maya’s brother’s absence
This was the nature of Dale Andrews, a very professional man who was extremely likeable. I will now describe an incident that defines the essence of the man. After the shooting death of three protestors by the police in July 2012 at the demonstration against the hike in electricity rates in Linden, we mounted several picket exercises in Georgetown. The Sunday night, we held a vigil on the pavement in front of Parliament Building. Dale was the editor for that night at Kaieteur News. I asked him to carry as the front page photo, the vigil and as a lead story.
To make my case stronger, I asked him to take cognizance that this was a struggle for the dignity of Black people and that he was a Black man. Dale immediately said, “na na,na” several times. He said, “Freddie, I am a professional journalist.” He explained that he has to see what competing photos he has and if they were more relevant than the vigil photo then the image of the vigil cannot go and he would have to see what lead stories he has before he decided to carry the vigil. In the end, he used another photograph on the front page and the vigil was not given lead story status. Even though I was his friend, his professionalism was more important. That was Dale Andrews.
Dale Andrews was a meticulous journalist, perceptive and incisively curious. He would go into a village to cover a crime scene and his mind would roam on phenomena unrelated to violence and he made a note on what he saw. We went to cover the 50th anniversary of a couple in Ann’s Grove. The day before, he journeyed to make the arrangement for the interview. When we were leaving, he told me he discovered something intriguing about the small population of Ann’s Grove – per capita it has more churches than any other village on the East Coast.
This country has lost a superb and fine journalist of rare talent. Why people die so soon, I will never know; humans will never know. But Dale went too soon and it has made this country culturally and intellectually poorer.
October 1st turn off your lights to bring about a change!
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