Al­fred Agui­ton

To be­gin with the dis­claimers: First­ly, I've known and been friends with Louis Lee Sing for enough years to agree and dis­agree with him am­i­ca­bly and re­spect­ful­ly, and non-dis­rup­tive­ly. Sec­ond­ly, per­ish the thought that I would not want our home­less broth­ers and sis­ters to be well-ac­com­mo­dat­ed and cared for; third­ly, I speak here more from a sense of per­son­al rever­ie than from pre­sump­tu­ous rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the views of oth­ers.That said, I make pub­lic the con­fes­sion that I feel a pal­pa­ble sense of dis­qui­et about the pro­pos­al to con­vert the for­mer home of 610 Ra­dio in­to a shel­ter for the in­di­gent.Rather, how­ev­er, than per­pet­u­ate the glad­i­a­tor-like com­bat­ive­ness that turns up in every en­counter we have with each oth­er these days, I would wish to sug­gest that should the pro­pos­al be ac­tu­alised and the needy are moved in­to "Num­ber 19" (as we re­mem­ber it), a few thoughts should be de­lib­er­ate­ly raised in the con­scious­ness of those who care, on all sides of the plan.

(For­give me in this list­ing of "thoughts" for not in­clud­ing every­thing and every­body, and for stick­ing more or less to my own mod­est 11-year stint at 610 Ra­dio, 1963-74.)I say, let the new ten­ants take up res­i­dence with the ghosts of those who first en­tered there in 1957 (a sol­id 54 years ago), and went on to give us a gen­uine gold­en era in broad­cast­ing.Let them hear the gen­tle but firm voice of Lar­ry Hey­wood de­liv­er­ing the morn­ing prayer, (com­posed by him in what would be to­day con­sid­ered a quaint ef­fort to ask the Almighty's bless­ing on a work­place)...let them won­der if that hap­pens to­day any­where-es­pe­cial­ly at cur­rent ra­dio sta­tions.Let them hear the crisp Jazz of Desmond Bourne's Morn­ing Show, to be fol­lowed years lat­er by the en­liven­ing ef­fer­ves­cence of Dave El­cock who was every­body's in­fec­tious big broth­er in the morn­ing.

Let them lis­ten to news short, sharp and sen­si­ble, read every hour-on-the-hour by the likes of su­perb pre­sen­ters: Frank Hugh­es, Leo De Leon, Fred­die Whar­wood, Yus­suf Ali, Ash­ton Cham­bers, Jim­my Wong, Dik Hen­der­son, Arnold Ram­per­sad (Prof), Carl Buxo (Rev).The news was edit­ed and ra­dio-writ­ten by jour­nal­ists of ster­ling qual­i­ty: Ed Fung and Ge­off Lewis out of Guyana, Jerome Ram­per­sad out of "Magee" of the Evening News; John Babb of the Guardian; Raoul Pan­tin, a for­mer cus­toms bro­ker as­sis­tant; Jim­my May­nard from the Guardian's subs desk, and lat­er on Den­nis Pan­tin, Carlisle Hink­son...all go­ing on to be­come out­stand­ing na­tion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al fig­ures oth­er­wise, from po­et to priest to Par­lia­men­tar­i­an, from econ­o­mist to en­ter­tain­er to ed­u­ca­tor.Let them en­joy women's mid-morn­ing pro­grammes host­ed by Lil­lian Fras­er, then Ann Austin (Whar­wood), Bren­da De Sil­va, at times As­tra Da Cos­ta; a stun­ning­ly pop­u­lar re­quest show Open House, that broke new ground for what used to be the dead 1-4 pm pe­ri­od; a bub­bly dri­ve-time show Rolling Home, with hot lo­cal and swing mu­sic put to­geth­er by the mae­stro Frisco Tor­re­al­ba; Hans Hanoomans­ingh's el­e­gant cul­tur­al bench-mark­er in Melodies of In­dia and From the Sil­ver Screen; Verne Al­lick's man­ly de­liv­ery of coun­try-and-west­ern fare in Coun­try Roads; Carl Red­head's vel­vety bari­tones for the ro­man­tic sounds of Late Date.

As they wan­der through the build­ing, they may hear dis­tin­guished spe­cial­i­ties in Lar­ry Hey­wood's Voice of One ra­dio es­say/ed­i­to­ri­als, which were un­miss­able and trig­gered an avalanche of re­quests for script-copies; the mind-builder Won­der­ful World, pre­pared by the gift­ed copy-writer Desmond Ahee (lat­er mys­te­ri­ous­ly self-re­named Paul Rene) and voiced sten­to­ri­an­ly by Leo De Leon. (These were pro­grammes that, even in their some­what vain­glo­ri­ous ti­tles, could get away with the kind of in­no­cent self-con­scious melo­dra­ma that on­ly a "friend" such as Ra­dio would be al­lowed.)The home­less may be able to sit up or lay down for the echo of grip­ping­ly rev­o­lu­tion­ary cur­rent af­fairs shows that in­clud­ed: The News­mak­ers, a first-time-ever one-hour night­ly news­cast, with un­prece­dent­ed live re­ports and ac­tu­al­i­ty in­serts; Hot­line, the coun­try's first tele­phone call-in pro­gramme; The Night­peo­ple, push­ing pro­gram­ming in­to the new zone of 11-mid­night, drop­ping in on peo­ple who worked in the night-weath­er­men, air traf­fic con­trollers, sug­ar work­ers at Ca­roni fac­to­ries, even street­walk­ers in the city, at times giv­en to live mu­sic from vet­er­ans as was Clar­ry Wears, and new­com­ers then as was Clive Zan­da. They may be amazed by the sound of week­end spec­tac­u­lars as in Hori­zons, with me­dia crack­shots such as Jones Madeira, Gideon Hanoomans­ingh, link­ing live se­lect coun­tries of the Caribbean every Sun­day.

It would be good for them to hear again the live OBs (Out­side Broad­casts), and the doc­u­men­taries on count­less vi­tal mat­ters: from ex­cit­ing elec­tions cov­er­age, to sober and at times somber state events; the bring­ing of his­to­ry as it was be­ing made in­to the homes, cars, pub­lic places and the ear of every cit­i­zen near a ra­dio-from man's first walk on the moon, to hur­ri­cane dis­as­ters, to lo­cal po­lit­i­cal up­heaval in 1970; Grena­da's de­ba­cle in the 1980's, Den­nis Mc­Comie-et al's hero­ic ser­vice in 1990, Dr Er­ic Williams' death im­pact, with Er­i­ca speak­ing to the na­tion via a 610 mi­cro­phone run up to her in the Red House; live pre­sent­ing of the Wood­ing Con­sti­tu­tion Com­mis­sion from Ch­aguara­mas Con­ven­tion Cen­tre; the vis­it of Pope John Paul II elec­tri­fy­ing the coun­try; the Black Pow­er March to Ca­roni, the Mass for Pri­vate Bai­ley at Teteron Bar­racks un­der the eye of "mu­ti­neers," the tele­phone in­ter­view with Lt Raf­fique Shah in which he de­scribed the "mutiny"?as akin to a "labour strike;" the Bloody Tues­day March, whose coura­geous cov­er­age led to out­ra­geous ac­tion against Raoul Pan­tin, Jones Madeira, Jerome Ram­per­sad and Tony Williams by the Com­mu­nist-fix­at­ed chair­man James Al­va Bain.The new dwellers may dis­cern in the cor­ri­dors that it was the NBS of the 60s and 70s that first demon­strat­ed the abil­i­ty to be a Gov­ern­ment-owned medi­um and yet be com­mer­cial­ly suc­cess­ful and jour­nal­is­ti­cal­ly free and for­ward-thrust­ing (un­til the apoc­a­lypse of the "Bain of Ra­dio"?who felt that scorched-earth was the best way to grow a crop of pro­fes­sion­al­ism).

The home­stead­ers re­lo­cat­ed to the 610 Build­ing can rev­el in the play­back of Sport and Cul­tur­al cov­er­age by 610: tru­ly glo­ri­ous crick­et from every­where; an in­de­fati­ga­ble Hol­lis Chin-Kee-Fatt re­port­ing on every imag­in­able sport and rev­el­ling in its every con­tro­ver­sy; cov­er­age of foot­ball from as ear­ly as in­ter-Col­le­giate lev­el, Olympic games as in Hase­ly Craw­ford's 1976 shin­ing mo­ment car­ried proud­ly by Tony Williams and Ken­ny De Sil­va in Mon­tre­al, cy­cling when a young Roger Gib­bon paced the world, the mul­ti-event South­ern Games, horse races, and Great Races to To­ba­go.In cul­ture, there was the erup­tion of first-time parang broad­casts, re-stim­u­lat­ing a joy­ous in­dige­nous Christ­mas gift; Car­ni­val colour­ful­ness, from the en­light­en­ing at Panora­ma to the de­light­ing at ca­lyp­so and mas, on stage and on the streets, rais­ing ad-lib com­men­tary to a fine art; 610 be­com­ing par­tic­u­lar­ly for­mi­da­ble in pro­duc­ing and pro­mot­ing the mu­sic and mu­si­cians of ca­lyp­so, pan and eth­nic mix­es.A steady stream of en­ter­tain­ment, in­for­ma­tion and cul­ture came from an eclec­tic range of sources: John­ny Boos host­ing the Amer­i­can Top Forty; Sam­my Bell giv­ing folksy ad­vice; the UWI stu­dents' pro­gramme that gave us a young Ged­des Granger as well as Gor­don Drap­er; farm­ing help from two ge­nial Guyanese overnight/ear­ly morn­ing per­son­al­i­ties, first Phil Viera, then lat­er Joe Pires (fa­ther of BC, per­haps ge­net­i­cal­ly drawn to the me­dia); dra­ma pro­duc­tions staged by No­bel Lau­re­ate Derek Wal­cott and his The­atre Work­shop Group; John Cu­pid's ear-open­ing, spir­it-en­rich­ing vis­its to vil­lages across T&T; and in­nu­mer­able events as they oc­curred and war­rant­ed pub­lic at­ten­tion.

Our lat­est ten­ants will sure­ly en­counter proof that the build­ing was the launch-pad for em­i­nent­ly his­toric take-offs and land­ings: the es­tab­lish­ment of 610 To­ba­go, a pride­ful na­tion­al ex­pan­sion, as was the 610 South stu­dio and of­fice com­plex, spear­head­ed by the gre­gar­i­ous en­er­gis­er Naz­im Mu­radali; and equal­ly ground-break­ing, the launch of this coun­try's first-ever FM ser­vice, Ra­dio 100, in 1972.All this broad­cast­ing set tra­di­tions and stan­dards that were lat­er car­ried on and no doubt im­proved on by flag-bear­ers in­clud­ing Tony Har­ford and Pe­ter De Labastide (Fr), sup­port­ed by a ver­i­ta­ble "Google" ser­vice for things 610 in Ver­non Al­lick.The am­bu­la­to­ry home­less can walk in the foot­steps of not on­ly great broad­cast­ers who pleased the ear, but al­so tech­ni­cians-cum-pro­duc­ers who wield­ed in­ter­na­tion­al stan­dard skills with mikes and mix­ers, tape-recorders and turn-ta­bles, as in Hamil­ton Clement, Tony Gomes, Ivan See­barath, Ivor Fer­reira, Hugh Phillip and Rudy Phillip; en­gi­neers who worked won­ders in the face of lim­it­ed re­sources, un­der stur­dy lead­ers such as John Roe and Frank Thomp­son; busi­ness ad­min­is­tra­tion leg­ends, as Pe­ter Pitts (ole time ca­lyp­so bon­homie), Phil At­teck (ac­tu­al ma­gi­cian and the Li­on who twinned Port-of-Spain with St Cather­ine's, On­tario) and Mar­i­on Bor­de (who added beau­ty to the brains trio-as a for­mer Jaycees Car­ni­val Queen, the then Mar­i­on Halfhide); and un­payable sup­port staff such as the ma­tri­archs Mrs Gamal­do and Ms Abra­ham.

These new­ly domi­ciled folks may find the time to spot the tracks of sev­er­al world-fa­mous fig­ures who phys­i­cal­ly vis­it­ed, from Ge­of­frey Hold­er to Ar­turo San­doval; and hear the voic­es of stars in John Lennon as in­ter­viewed at the in­fa­mous Christi­na Gar­dens, Ari­ma, home of Michael X who was lat­er hanged for his "grave" deed; Di­ana Ross and the Supremes in Mon­tre­al, Sam­my Davis in Mi­a­mi. They may tune in as well to in­tre­pid Jones and Gideon fil­ing from var­i­ous parts of the globe where they at­tend­ed world-sig­nif­i­cant news­mak­ing events.While it would not be their do­ing to be so housed, the home­less in the NBS build­ing may well ap­pre­ci­ate know­ing that 19 Aber­crom­by Street was the birth­place of the cog­ni­tive dreams of a small group of men and women who wished to "in­form, ed­u­cate and en­ter­tain" their fel­low na­tion­als by way of com­pe­ten­cy, charm and com­pan­ion­ship. This was a cru­cible for pro­fes­sion­al­ism where work­ers cre­at­ed, wrote, pro­duced, spoke, record­ed and broad­cast up to a lev­el of world-class­ness clear­ly not in over sup­ply for some time now.This was a fount where peo­ple brought their souls for mak­ing con­tact with oth­er souls, through the mag­ic of air­waves; and a sin­gle lo­ca­tion where proud per­son­nel gave up their lives to the art and func­tion of broad­cast­ing, do­ing so some­times spir­i­tu­al­ly, at times near lit­er­al­ly (as dur­ing the un­rests of 1970 and 1990). Vir­tu­al­ly every minute of every day was his­to­ry-mak­ing as the sta­tion's per­form­ers reached out and touched, em­braced and brought in, cap­tured and cov­ered, the end­less stream of hap­pen­ings in­volv­ing every one with­in earshot.

And it can be tes­ti­fied with­out a blush: they did it with an un­aware­ness of the great­ness it would lat­er stand out to be.On a more sub­jec­tive note, those who came to work at 610 found them­selves weld­ed to­geth­er in the man­ner pe­cu­liar to ra­dio broad­cast­ing-ra­dio trans­mits a bond among its prac­ti­tion­ers, hum­bling them in this serv­ing of fel­low-man, but ed­i­fy­ing them to a for­giv­able lev­el of "elite-corps"-ness as they sense how po­tent yet grat­i­fy­ing it is to give to face­less mul­ti­tudes of peo­ple in­for­ma­tion, facts, news, opin­ions, wis­dom, plea­sure, stim­u­la­tion, heal­ing, en­cour­age­ment, chas­tise­ment, guid­ance, a sense of dis­tance brought near, hap­pen­ings brought to you in the im­me­di­ate, re­plays for the late-join­ers and up­dates for the anx­ious­ly in­ter­est­ed, a steady flow of pleas­ant­ness, care and Tri­ni "good com­pa­ny," an ear will­ing to lis­ten to them, and an op­por­tu­ni­ty to have their voic­es heard by many oth­ers...all of this in ex­change for noth­ing asked of the lis­ten­ers, not even a guar­an­tee that they are lis­ten­ing!

And the lis­ten­ers rec­i­p­ro­cat­ed. They be­came "fans," who in Hol­ly­wood-style were giv­en signed pho­to por­traits of an­nounc­ers; and face­less voic­es on the air be­came house­hold names that even some 50 years lat­er still roll off a tongue when old­sters ac­ci­den­tal­ly meet.Fan mail some­times con­tained a mar­riage pro­pos­al, and there was the odd case of harm­less stalk­ing by some avid lis­ten­er who fell in love with a voice.In those days, news­pa­per­dom didn't at­tract such a per­son­al­i­ty cult, and the celebri­ty­ship of tele­vi­sion had not yet ar­rived.Our ten­ants may per­ceive that per­haps stronger than the bond be­tween per­former and lis­ten­er, was the ca­ma­raderie that de­vel­ops be­tween fel­low-broad­cast­ers. They de­rive an up­growth as well as an ex­pan­sion from shar­ing the job with each oth­er. Of­ten, work­ing at 610 one would feel ma­tu­ri­ty evolv­ing through mul­ti­ple per­son­ae-emerg­ing as a hap­py amal­gam of mis­sion­ary, med­i­cine-man and mes­sen­ger.In the 11-year pe­ri­od I know of in­ti­mate­ly at 610, no prac­ti­tion­er ever re­al­ly fell out of love with the job...and that had noth­ing to do with ma­te­r­i­al re­wards, since salaries were em­bar­rass­ing­ly low!

My guess to­day is that few of us can go past the build­ing at Num­ber 19-di­lap­i­dat­ed as it is, with­out feel­ing our pre­cious mem­o­ries be­ing wrapped by those lit­tle plas­tic twists of sad­ness that comes from point­less ne­glect.It would seem to some of us that to con­sign those years of con­tri­bu­tion to a dump of aban­don­ment with­out a thought for ef­fort to pre­serve, is an in­flict­ing on our own body so­cial yet an­oth­er wound, so sim­i­lar to the "his­to­rycide"?we per­pe­trate against our oth­er ar­chi­tec­tur­al and en­vi­ron­men­tal spaces. This be­comes a wound that pierces our will to care, and our care for the will that pass­es on the best of our­selves to the rest of our­selves.With­out over-sen­ti­men­tal­i­ty, we think of this build­ing as be­ing very much a sa­cred place, not too un­like a he­roes' bur­ial ground where the re­mains of mean­ing­ful con­trib­u­tors re­side, or as an his­toric land­mark where the spir­its of a keep­sake oc­cur­rence are ho­n­oured.Of the above men­tioned in this piece, 24 of them are now de­ceased-and de­serv­ing of be­ing com­mem­o­rat­ed as kind­ly and civil­ly as we must al­ways treat with our de­part­ed.To see the build­ing as be­ing mere­ly a phys­i­cal struc­ture is al­most akin to think­ing blas­phe­mous­ly that a moth­er is no more than a womb which bore us.As the new­ly shel­tered are be­ing bed­ded down, the au­thor­i­ties should know that they may be ig­nor­ing as well the deeply em­bed­ded cares and fears of in­nu­mer­able rel­a­tives and friends of 610ers who had their own sac­ri­fice and sup­port stream through this build­ing to make a Na­tion feel it­self to be a fam­i­ly, ra­dio ac­ti­vat­ing the most an­cient rite of so­cial­is­ing-gath­er­ing around a cen­tral ob­ject for talk and mu­sic, warmth and light, com­mu­nion and joy, a shar­ing not meant for a while but for an un­con­strict­ed time.

Fi­nal­ly, the ques­tions:

Can this build­ing there­fore not be al­lowed to be an­oth­er in­stance of our for­get­ting, but be used as a sanc­tu­ary for: show­ing ev­i­dence of and trib­ute to the mak­ings of our his­to­ry-per­haps hous­ing archives and ar­ti­facts, col­lec­tions and con­tri­bu­tions, tes­ti­monies and trea­sures...for oth­ers to see, hear, re­live, re­learn, re-im­bibe?

Not on­ly a mon­u­ment to 610 Ra­dio, but to all out­stand­ing me­dia hous­es (in­clud­ing Ra­dio Trinidad by whom so much ex­cel­lence was pro­vid­ed as a pre­de­ces­sor) and all those me­dia prac­ti­tion­ers who make our liv­ing good and our re­mem­ber­ing even bet­ter?

Where lies their work now?!

Sure­ly, the au­thor­i­ties siz­ing up this build­ing can choose to put more em­pha­sis on the Fourth Es­tate than on re­al es­tate.Would the British so­ci­ety-our favourite rearview mir­ror-al­low their pen­ny-pinch­ing Gov­ern­ment to con­vert the BBC's Bush House in­to a lo­ca­tion for char­i­ty or mon­ey-sav­ing?

Can the very valid search for ac­com­mo­da­tion for the home­less not be ge­o­graph­i­cal­ly broad­ened?

In to­tal agree­ment with the sen­ti­ments of good-spir­it­ed souls-Fr Pe­ter, Bren­da-I feel with­out a shred of doubt, that our less for­tu­nate folk ab­solute­ly should be pro­vid­ed the manda­to­ry ba­sics of a civilised so­ci­ety: food, cloth­ing and shel­ter. But the price of do­ing this need not be at the cost of our ci­vil­i­ty's in­fra­struc­ture.The mem­o­ries of 610 Ra­dio ought not to be made home­less them­selves. (If this were a ra­dio pro­duc­tion, I may hear now ris­ing the strains of Dionne War­wick's 1964 hit ver­sion of Burt Bacharach's A House is not a Home. Trea­cly, but true...as is so wont in Ra­dio.)