On Sat­ur­day night, away from the news cy­cles of the me­dia she had been part of for most of her adult life, Allyson Hen­nessy passed away. The vet­er­an broad­cast­er would prob­a­bly have been amused that the news of her death aired al­most in­stant­ly, light­ing up the so­cial me­dia chan­nels Face­book and Twit­ter with mes­sages of con­cern, em­pa­thy and sin­cere loss. For the re­spon­dents to the con­cise mes­sages re­port­ing her pass­ing, los­ing Allyson Hen­nessy meant the loss of a part of their lives, so deeply en­trenched was this genre defin­ing talk show host in the his­to­ry of tele­vi­sion in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

But Hen­nessy's last­ing al­lure as a pres­ence on tele­vi­sion was not the re­sult of the many decades she spent on air, it was the con­nec­tion she shared with her in­vis­i­ble au­di­ence, the guile­less hon­esty of her in­ter­views with thou­sands of guests on her shows and a pres­ence that de­spite be­ing di­min­ished by the tiny tube that broad­cast her im­age, mag­ni­fied an open, car­ing spir­it that was ob­vi­ous to any­one who watched her shows. And there were many shows. As pro­duc­er and pre­sen­ter, Allyson Hen­nessy presided over many TTT live broad­casts, most no­tably of Car­ni­val, gen­er­a­tions worth of Com­mu­ni­ty Date­line, mi­grat­ing the con­cept of the show to NCC4 as 10-12 with Allyson, be­fore con­clud­ed her work­ing life as an on-air jour­nal­ist and broad­cast­er with Gayel­leTV's The Box.

Hen­nessy de­scribed her­self as a "fail­ure" at tra­di­tion­al school­ing and en­tered the Cor­don Bleu to study French culi­nary art. The lessons would guide her lat­er ef­forts at mar­ry­ing clas­sic cook­ing tech­nique with lo­cal cui­sine and led to Veni Mange Restau­rant, a col­lab­o­ra­tion she be­gan with her sis­ter Rose­mary Hezeki­ah 30 years ago. That ven­ture would be­come one of the first for­mal restau­rants to spe­cialise in epi­cure­an treat­ments of lo­cal cook­ing and af­ter mov­ing from St James, the busi­ness be­came an an­chor­ing fix­ture of the restau­rant row that Ari­api­ta Av­enue would be­come in lat­er years. Weary­ing of frosty win­ters and long­ing for home, the young chef per­suad­ed her boyfriend, Em­mett, to re­turn to Trinidad and To­ba­go with her, where they mar­ried.

Cook­ing would pro­vide the en­tree to broad­cast­ing for the young Hen­nessy, who host­ed a pop­u­lar cook­ing show that showed view­ers what she could do with a pot, and with her calm, en­gag­ing style of pre­sen­ta­tion, demon­strat­ed a win­ning style for the un­for­giv­ing eye of the tele­vi­sion cam­era. In 2009, the Trinidad and To­ba­go Pub­lish­ers and Broad­cast­ers As­so­ci­a­tion ho­n­oured Hen­nessy with a life­time achieve­ment award for the 40 years of work and the com­mit­ment to con­tin­u­ous im­prove­ment that fol­lowed that first cook­ing show. At that event, Hen­nessy, vis­i­bly over­come by the ho­n­our, re­called one of her more mem­o­rable as­sign­ments, an in­ter­view with Dr Er­ic Williams. The no­tably un­re­tired broad­cast­er amused an au­di­ence of me­dia pro­fes­sion­als by point­ing out that it was Williams who opened the door for her when she ar­rived for the in­ter­view. It's fair to say that Allyson Hen­nessy could have left broad­cast­ing when TTT was shut down for re­struc­tur­ing.

In­stead, she con­tin­ued to work at NCC4, first con­tin­u­ing her work an­chor­ing the com­men­tary of Car­ni­val for that sta­tion's first broad­cast of the fes­ti­val in 2005 and more re­cent­ly to add her ex­per­tise and pro­fes­sion­al guid­ance to Gayel­leTV's The Box. A pas­sion­ate cit­i­zen, Hen­nessy was an un­abashed cham­pi­on of Des­per­a­does, lo­cal crick­eters and foot­ballers and Car­ni­val, which she par­tic­i­pat­ed in over many decades, most re­cent­ly as leader of a small group of friends who played mas to­geth­er every Car­ni­val Tues­day with their own mu­sic truck. Much will be said of Allyson Hen­nessy in the wake of her pass­ing, but from the per­spec­tive of the me­dia as a pro­fes­sion, she did the work she loved and she did it with pas­sion and great craft.