Deb­bie Ja­cob

There are peo­ple who touch our lives pro­found­ly even though we re­al­ly don't know them. Allyson Hen­nessy was one of those peo­ple. She re­mind­ed us on a dai­ly ba­sis what it was to be a true-true Tri­ni, and she did it with an amaz­ing com­bi­na­tion of panache and dig­ni­ty. Her life was like that: A jux­ta­po­si­tion of some­times seem­ing­ly con­tra­dic­to­ry im­ages, which is re­al­ly the essence of be­ing a Trinida­di­an. She was earthy and dig­ni­fied; pas­sion­ate and calm. Allyson in­spired us and made us feel com­fort­able in our own skin.

I still re­mem­ber the way she greet­ed me and said my name the first time she met me. I was sur­prised be­cause I felt she re­al­ly didn't have any rea­son to know me. There was a wel­com­ing warmth in her voice that was al­ways there whether she was on TV or talk­ing to you in per­son. On TV, Allyson was nat­ur­al, and that is a very dif­fi­cult feat once that cam­era is turned on. She was nat­ur­al, I think, be­cause she was so con­fi­dent in her own skin, both as a per­son and as a Trinida­di­an. Her love for Trinidad and To­ba­go oozed out of her.

It did not gush and over­flow in an un­con­trol­lable, emo­tion­al way. In­stead, it was an easy, nat­ur­al al­most un­can­ny way of com­bin­ing feel­ing with knowl­edge.

Allyson was like Moth­er Trinidad, nur­tur­ing us all-even those who had adopt­ed T&T as our home. We all felt wel­come and lucky to be part of this coun­try and this cul­ture be­cause she was the essence of this cul­ture.

It was most fit­ting, I think, that she had Veni Mange with her sis­ter, Ros­es, as we all call Rose­mary. That restau­rant sym­bol­ised the kitchen of every Tri­ni home: A warm place to gath­er with great food and com­pa­ny.

It so­lid­i­fied her im­age of Ma­ma Trinidad and al­lowed her to dole out hos­pi­tal­i­ty to each and every vis­i­tor-for­eign­er or lo­cal-who came through the door. No one was be­yond Allyson's reach. Veni Mange was a way of keep­ing in touch with her roots, and a way of putting her own per­son­al spin on what she had stud­ied. Through Veni Mange, Allyson found a cre­ative and pa­tri­ot­ic way of putting her Cor­don Bleu train­ing to good use.

Maybe it's my imag­i­na­tion be­cause Allyson, in all her sim­plic­i­ty, sym­bol­ised, and in­deed sym­bol­is­es, true Tri­ni in­no­v­a­tive­ness, but to me she was the first per­son to cre­ate the all-Tri­ni type of restau­rant that el­e­vat­ed lo­cal food to a fine art and a dig­ni­fied ex­pe­ri­ence while com­bin­ing am­bi­ence as on­ly a West In­di­an could.

And in my mem­o­ry, which I don't want to cor­rect if it is wrong, she was the first to of­fer the all-in­clu­sive fete. I of­ten think of the spir­it of those fetes over at Li­ons and how far we have strayed from that sim­ple feel­ing of food and fun. Now every­thing is so in­tense and com­mer­cialised. Allyson had a calm, love­ly spir­it about her. She was nev­er pre­ten­tious, nev­er snip­py, nev­er an­gry, nev­er mean or mean-spir­it­ed, nev­er dis­ap­point­ed, it seemed.

I some­times found it dif­fi­cult to main­tain an up­beat, op­ti­mistic at­ti­tude to­wards ca­lyp­so and Car­ni­val and Trinidad cul­ture, but I can't re­mem­ber Allyson ever be­ing cyn­i­cal. To me, that is sim­ply amaz­ing. She helped to launch many a ven­ture on Com­mu­ni­ty Date­line and she gave every­one she in­ter­viewed the con­fi­dence and sup­port they need­ed. Her en­thu­si­asm nev­er waned. With Allyson, all cul­tur­al ven­tures were equals. She made it her busi­ness to be a pil­lar of sup­port, a kind of may­pole that we all danced around. Last week, Re­nee Cum­mings asked how do we ho­n­our some­one like Allyson? How do we ho­n­our her mem­o­ry and keep her work alive? As Re­nee point­ed out, Allyson was a great role mod­el for young women and jour­nal­ists.

She paved the way for women in jour­nal­ism. It is im­por­tant that we find a way to ho­n­our Allyson-not just for her, but for our­selves. We need the sense of his­to­ry and cul­ture that Allyson be­lieved in and worked so hard to pre­serve. We need that en­er­gy and kind­ness, op­ti­mism and na­tion­al­ism that she evoked in a nat­ur­al way. We can't lose sight of that. We need role mod­els like Allyson, and we on­ly go on and cre­ate new role mod­els by re­mem­ber­ing who we are and where we came from and how peo­ple like Allyson helped us to be­lieve in our­selves and our cul­ture.

Allyson is ir­re­place­able. We all know that, but her spir­it lives on, en­cour­ag­ing us all to look deep­er in­to our­selves and our cul­ture; en­cour­ag­ing us to love our mu­sic and cul­ture on a whole new lev­el; en­cour­ag­ing us to cel­e­brate who we are and where we came from; en­cour­ag­ing us to ac­cept and love one an­oth­er, and, most of all, en­cour­ag­ing us to meet over a good meal and good con­ver­sa­tion where we all can raise our glass­es and toast, "To us. May we al­ways move for­ward with a lov­ing spir­it fed equal­ly by nos­tal­gia and the hope for hap­pi­er to­mor­rows." Thank you Allyson, for all you gave us.