Dear Editor,
Allan Arthur Fenty who died in his sleep last Saturday at his South Ruimveldt Park home was the quintessential self-made man.
This nationally acclaimed folklorist, broadcaster, former public relations kingpin of the PNC and Stabroek News columnist for 30 long years, had never attended high school. Although he did not have a formal secondary education, Fenty became the Chief Information Officer in the then Ministry of Information on Brickdam in the early 80s, and he was also a radio host as well as a television producer during his decades-long media career.
In an interview at the launching of his booklet: “A Plate-a Guyana Cook-up” in February 2011, he recalled that he had always been attracted to speaking and writing as favourite forms of expression. He noted that the only General Certificate of Education (GCE) subject he did was English, pursuing self-tuition during the 80-days strike in 1963, as he hadn’t anything else to do.
Fenty and I shared a 40-year plus non-transactional friendship that was cheerful, uncomplicated and mentally stimulating. We managed to overcome periods of genuine disagreement.
On reflection, I can see that he possessed some character traits common to the self-made, as he learned from himself the best uses to which his life could be put in this world. Showing those traits, including openness, extraversion and conscientiousness, he respected his roots in Alberttown, Georgetown in colonial British Guiana, but he never let them trap him; he was never afraid to be ridiculous and he was adept at sorting what was important from what was trivial.
Many will miss his weekly sardonic and needling ‘grass roots’ column “Frankly Speaking”, but commendably the Stabroek News Editor-in-Chief has decided that in tribute to Fenty, the newspaper will run some of his earlier columns in the slot that he once filled, when he demonstrated a discipline he rarely showed generally.
I will miss our frequent repartees, where no topic was taboo. A few of those issues subsequently gained prominence in “Frankly Speaking”.
Fenty waged a few campaigns in the public interest via “Frankly Speaking” over the years, notably the degradation of the once charming and unique Garden City, Georgetown; as well as the place of horrors that was Le Repentir Cemetery. Many others will also remember Uncle Allan as a kind and generous man, a spirited senior citizen who was a diehard Guyanese.
It may not be widely known but Fenty, a trained teacher, was also a calypso aficionado, an unacademic version of the widely acclaimed calypso scholar, Pro-fessor Gordon Rohlehr. It was not by chance that Fenty was responsible for the publication on Guyana’s calypso monarch: “The Lord Canary – The Life and Contributions of Malcolm Corrica”, who was also a Minister of State and parliamentarian during the Forbes Burnham administration.
Fenty, who would often declare that he never “went to high school”, held his own in discussions among his university educated colleagues and friends, standing out with penetrating insights into a range of current events. Moreover, he was quick-witted with a matchless sense of humour, that was sometimes laced with bawdy undertones.
Farewell my brilliant, grass roots pal, may your soul RIP. My sincerest condolences to your wife Myrna, whom you had planned to visit next month in New York for her birthday, your daughters Julia, Nadia, Suzy and Jackie and your cousins in New Jersey. And to Fenty’s number of girlfriends-caregivers, I say, “I’m so sorry for your loss”.
Sincerely,
Lloyd Conway
