The passing of a friend who was more than a friend

Jan 09, 2011 Features / Columnists, My Column

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I rarely ever feel bad at the passing of an individual because I know that everyone of us will one day leave this earth. That is a given that is more certain than sunrise the next day. And indeed I have my share of presiding at the funerals of family members, relatives and friends.
However, there are some passings that strike harder than others largely because of the association one would share with the late individual. For example, people tend to grieve more for a mother than a father perhaps because mothers always seem to be there; they are the ones no matter how bad we are they never turn their backs.
Scarcely a day goes by without me confronting a mother outside the Camp Street jail trying to provide some comfort for a wayward son. I have known of mothers who move to sell their homes to compensate someone who got robbed by an errant child. What is striking about this is the fact that when all is said and done there is no guarantee that the child is not going to create another problem. Meanwhile the mother must think about shelter and a future.
There are fathers who would be equally demonstrative with their affection for children although these happen to be in the minority. But there have been quite a few, and my father was one of them, who in later years try to play catch up because they missed the best years of your life. The person who shared that with me was my stepfather, and I shed a few tears for him when he passed away in 1974.
Then there were the friends who appeared to share their last with you. When their number is called all the good things that they did would come flooding back and with them the emotions that men have been trained to hide for fear of appearing to be weak.
Clement Ezekiel David, and I noticed that someone said that he had other names. One of his former colleagues actually said that his name was Clement Ezekiel Compton Eric Wilberforce David. His mother must have had the devil’s own job of pleasing so many relatives when it was time to baptize him. But while we in this part of the world would find this strange the British Royal Family actually has more names than our own Clem had.
My first encounter with him was way back in 1969 when he worked as a purser on the MV Powis that plied the Bartica route. He was a lively fellow and the first thing that caught my attention was his voice. And it was no wonder that the girls were always there just to hear him talk.
I remember that back then he had that charming smile and a sense of humour that combined to land him in trouble with Margaret Bradford, one of the beauties of Bartica. They got married on the same day that I did, July 3, 1971. That was a day that Barticians got something to talk about and to celebrate. And that was a Saturday to remember. Both of our wives were Barticians.
I went back to Bartica by air having got married in the city. That night there was a dance at a place called the Barn. It was one of Bartica’s premier entertainment centres on the waterfront at Fourth Avenue. The Regatta Pavilion now stands there. There was a dance there that night and I was taken there, so the dance became my wedding reception. Clem and his wife came in not long after and what a night that was. For the first and probably the only time in Bartica’s history, two young couples got a wedding reception of class.
The promoter smiled all the way to the bank because the guests paid to get in.
Clem and I gravitated to the media and I suppose we both made waves. We became household names—him on radio and me in the press. We broke stories together, trained young people coming into the profession and earned the reputation as excellent political reporters. People would say that we both have in my case, and had in Clem’s, great voices.
We suffered the same fate in 1992. It was hinted that the new government wanted no part of me so I resigned. Clem was told that he had to go and so he left the Guyana Broadcasting Corporation. We were left to our own devices to earn a living and we did what we knew best. We hunted the news and found it wherever it existed. We continued to make waves.
We both gravitated to television where we perhaps did even more than we did as members of the radio and press. Both Clem and I eventually got divorced. He remarried. I have not and that is one difference in our lives.
Clem and I would remain close throughout the ensuing years. He would call me about some story that I would break and I would direct him to sources. He would use his talk show to further develop my story. I continued in the press, working with Kaieteur News and Clem, as did Basil Bradshaw and Roger Moore, would select the choice headlines and feed them to the nation.
Illness forced Clem away from the limelight and all I was fed were the bits and pieces of what he was doing. I never one day visited him because I have a problem seeing my friends in bed. But I always asked about my friend.
I was in bed when I got a call from a Kaieteur News colleague, Mike Baptiste, informing me that Clem had died. I knew that it was coming but I was still shocked. Clem has gone on taking with him another piece of me as all my friends do when they take their last breath.
I will miss him.

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