The late Terry Holder was memorialized as the best Secretary General of the Caribbean Broadcasting Union (CBU) and a man who agonized over the falling standards here in broadcasting and other areas of national life.
Fellow broadcaster Rafiq Khan delivering a tribute at Holder’s funeral on January 15th at St Andrew’s Kirk asked how long society would ignore its own prophets.
“Terry was passionate about this loss of standards and despaired that it may be beyond reclaim. He feared that the mediocrity of yesterday had become the excellence of today. This insight brought to mind these words of a poet, slightly misquoted:
“Degradation is a monster of so frightful mien
As to be hated needs to be seen.
Yet, seen too often, familiar with her face,
We first endure, then pity, then embrace”.
“The question therefore becomes: How can a generation that has embraced degraded values be made to recognize perennial excellence?” Khan asked
“Fossils like me are long forgotten. But Hugh Cholmondeley strove, failed and is gone. Terry Holder agonized, failed and is now gone. And what of my other proteges – Vic Insanally, Ron Robinson, Rovin Deodat, Carlton James, who are still among you? Perhaps it is more expedient to send them too into pre-mature fossilage?
“Terry Holder, among the last holdouts from an era when standards really mattered, lamented what has become of his beloved country as a whole…while I, an ancient mariner with a narrower perspective, have been searching in vain, amidst the tawdriness of a garbage and concrete jungle, for the Garden City of my youth.
“Is anyone even noticing that the philistines are taking over our city and our country? Even in the little elegant avenue where Terry and I last lived, I see the philistines rising.
“And I am left to wonder how paltry is any tribute of soon-forgotten words to such as Terence Holder? How long will we ignore our prophets? When will we gather the collective will to stand behind them and say: Enough?” Khan asked.
He said that Holder’s life and stifled dream should stir all out of their slumber to rise up and act.
Khan also traced his connections with Holder over the years and particularly at the CBU. Holder was President, then Secretary General, of the CBU while Khan was responsible for UNESCO’s communication inputs in the region.
“It was at a time when the CBU, a once vibrant organization founded by another Guyanese, Hugh Cholmondeley, had fallen prey to that well known and still-going-strong Caribbean syndrome of ramshackle glossed over by big-talk.
“And here was Terry Holder, coming from an operational background, steeped in the then heady wine of Guyanese broadcasting at its best, and blessed with a non-abrasive personality and an equable temperament.
“Here indeed was Terry, artful and gifted, on a mission to unite a disunited Union and energize it for the advancement of all its member systems”, Khan mused.
From dealing with one radio station, Holder had been catapulted into an arena with around 35 radio and television systems in 18 countries and had to also deal with directives from a CBU board which often backslid on resources.
“Yet he made the best of what he could muster, while becoming the convenient football for board members who preened themselves on the presumption that by making demands they had done their work.
“Terry kept his cool – until at one meeting he had had enough and made a simple retort, to which there was no comeback, and which is now legend in the CBU. Terence Holder, under attack, quietly asked: `If bashing the Secretary General is the answer, what is the question?’”
Into this milieu, Khan said UNESCO stepped in with money-bags, expertise and conditionalities. He said it may have helped that he and Holder came from the same country and subscribed to the same standards.
“Our negotiations therefore tended to be conducted in a kind of shorthand, and out of a free-flowing partnership between the CBU (i.e. Terry Holder) and UNESCO emerged improvements in broadcasting capabilities and outputs at a level and of a spread never before or since achieved.
“Then, in the midst of a thriving relationship that was short on talk but big on delivery, Terry got homesick, forsook the CBU and returned to the country he loved to begin the third phase of his remarkable career.
“I, on the other hand, remained around the CBU long enough to cement my view that Terence Holder was the most productive, indeed the best Secretary General, in the history of the Caribbean Broadcasting Union.”
He recounted his final meeting with Holder in Georgetown, days before last Christmas.
“There was I, on my arrival in the country, full of anxiety for Terry’s welfare, being whisked to his home by our mutual friend Vic Insanally. Unknown to me, Terry had just moved into the very street where my Guyana home is located.
“Anticipating a one-on-one visit, I did not know I would be joining a select group who had foregathered at Terry’s request, so that he could be with them for what, it is now sadly clear, he foresaw would be the last time.
“And then, Terence Holder, made his entrance, wheel-chaired and frail, but with a mind, memory and wit as sharp and sparkling as ever, holding us all in his thrall. With me, he joshed as to whether, by finding himself now on the same street where I lived, he had moved up or down in life.
“And he recounted some minutiae of our past encounters which I, in allegedly better condition, was hard put to remember. I doubt that any of us who were there would have left not uplifted by Terry’s last hurrah”, Khan said.
Holder died at the age of 73.
