Newsday’s giant tells it as it is

Mills’ daughter Suzanne, also a journalist, completed the book after her death in 2014 at age 85.

A must-read for media practitioners, writers, historians and those who value diligence, sacrifice and ambition, Byline: The Memoirs of Therese Mills, is an authentic, engaging, inspirational look at one of Trinidad and Tobago’s quintessential journalists.

It is a story about family, legacy and one woman’s commitment, amidst unspeakable odds, to changing a paradigm.

Mills, the former Editor-In-Chief and Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Board of Daily News Limited (Newsday), passed away on January 1, 2014, at the age of 85. She died from stage four cancer, her memoirs revealed.

Mills’ shocking death drew the curtain on a distinguished 69-year career in journalism which reached its pinnacle in 1993 when she launched Newsday, the country’s third daily newspaper - one which she often said, discredited the view of some in the society that the paper would not have survived beyond its initial six months in operation.

The year before Mills’ untimely passing, though, she had been completing her memoirs to incorporate the “Newsday” years of her stellar career.

And although she did not live to complete it, Mills’ daughter, Suzanne, who worked as an editor alongside her mother at the newspaper for two decades, embraced the opportunity to celebrate this exciting, ground-breaking chapter of the iconic journalist’s career - one which brought to bear elements of Mills’ life experiences dating back to her early childhood in Woodbrook and later, Diego Martin and Belmont as well as the struggles she overcame to survive in journalism, a once male-oriented profession.

Told in an effortless yet incisive manner containing snapshots of pivotal moments in Mills’ life, including her years in London, the death of her husband, Ken, and her stint as the first female Editor- In-Chief of a daily newspaper in the region, Byline opens with Suzanne’s vivid, emotional account of the days leading up to her mother’s death in 2014.

She recalled that her mother had come into her room, one week before her demise, announcing, with a sense of urgency, that there were floods in St Vincent.

In hindsight, Suzanne deduced that her mother, perhaps sensing her impending death, had wanted to “extract me from my despondence and depression and pull her toward me in a last embrace of mother and daughter.” On that day, however, Suzanne wrote that when her mother entered her room, “I would not budge, now my greatest regret.” Mills’ deteriorating health had taken a personal toll on her.

“I could find no passion for breaking news. Having watched her body wane for months, I knew that she was soon for the afterlife, even if she did not,” Suzanne wrote, adding that she had been infuriated with her mother for months after having tried unsuccessfully to take her to the doctor.

In Mills’ announcement of floods in St Vincent, Suzanne surmised that her mother was “dying as she lived,” becoming more upbeat “as the flesh weakened.” Mills’ passion for news, even in the face of impending death, dominated Suzanne’s account in My Mother and I, which, essentially chronicled Mills’ work at the Newsday, from the moment she received a request from the Chokoolingo Group to lead Newsday in 1993 to the confident, uncompromising leadership she provided at the paper for more than two decades.

As Suzanne wrote: “My mother was Newsday and Newsday was her and though, in 2013 - the year in which Newsday turned 20 - she kept insisting that she would retire. I could hardly imagine her not working on her paper.

Such was her love for it.” In Byline, Suzanne jokingly recalled how reporters, in Newsday’s embryonic years, were forced to use “antiquated computers, point and shoot cameras when the competition carried laptops, digital gear and travelled with mobile phones.” These setbacks, she mentioned, did not stop the paper from rising to number one, just four years after its inception.

“The little paper that the Express and the Guardian had said could not, really did. The two giants certainly stopped laughing in 1997 when the Daily Newsday made it to number one,” Suzanne wrote.

She also explored Mills’ meticulousness, recalling that her mother, at the age of 65, when she began Newsday, “could spot an error (in the paper) a mile away.” “Who could have picked up every error such that the proof readers sought to sneak by her office? Who could chastise us with that sideways glance?” Suzanne asked.

Suzanne’s account of Mills’ illustrious tenure at Newsday, however, was not drawn mainly from familial association but through the views of several persons with whom her mother worked over the years.

These included retired news editor John Babb (whom Mills met shortly after cutting her teeth in journalism); Horace Monsegue (Newsday’s Assignments Editor); university lecturer and political scientist Dr Hamid Ghany (one of the paper’s first columnists); and former political/investigative reporter Andre Bagoo, all of whom provided personal insights into Mills’ strength, work ethic and tenacity - traits she never relinquished.

Indeed, Mills blazed a trail in which only few can boast. The once outspoken Providence Girls student, who initially wanted to become a lawyer, has interviewed many prominent personalities and experienced many watershed moments in TT ’s development, Byline revealed.

For example, it talks about the entry of the US on local shores during World War 11 in the 1940s, which brought a number of air and sea bases, most notably at Wrightson Road, Port-of- Spain and Wallerfield.

Mills, who worked at the now defunct Gazette at the time, recalled the impact of the US influence in Trinbagonian society.

“I remember Port-of-Spain, particularly Park Street, virtually run over by US sailors and soldiers and their military police. Park Street (like Wrightson Road, a section of which was known as the “Gaza Strip”) was a stretch of clubs, bars and brothels. MPs, (military policemen) powerfully-built men, patrolled day and night largely to stop fights and drunkenness,” Mills wrote.

She also recalled that many intimate relationships were established between American military and Trinidad women - liaisons which may have provided material for Sparrow’s “Jean and Dinah”.

Seemingly countless high-society engagements, an interview with revered social worker Audrey Jeffers, the birth and growth of the People’s National Movement and a chance meeting with Sir Hugh Wooding, were all part of Mills’ experience in journalism.

Regarding the latter, Mills wrote that it was her “widely read” column, Focus, during her years at the Trinidad Guardian, which led to a meeting with the former Chief Justice.

Wooding, in a public speech at a convention, had made comments about women which Mills found to be offensive.

“When the article appeared, several colleagues expressed amazement that I could be so bold as to criticise the Chief Justice. I had no regrets and I waited for his reaction,” she wrote.

Mills, though, was pleasantly surprised by Wooding’s reaction. He invited her to his office at the then Court of Appeal on St Vincent Street.

“It was my first meeting with him and it was entirely cordial.... he never once mentioned his address or the column.

Instead, we talked about many other topics. We became good friends.” In Byline, Mills also referred to a quirky assignment while at the Guardian in which she was asked to interview an Arima man who wanted a wife.

As it turned out, the man mistakenly took her for a possible candidate.

“I laughed all the way back to the office.

He certainly wasn’t my type either but I did get a story out of it...,” Mills wrote.

Through it all, Mills never discounted the experience of her earlier years in the library of the Gazette, her first job, which, she felt, set the framework for the career she thoroughly enjoyed.

“The years in the Gazette library made me familiar with just about everything that was taking place in the country. I learnt the importance of accuracy in writing and orderliness in presenting facts,” she wrote.

“It was a period when funerals were reported with as much detail as were meetings of the Legislative or County Councils.” Perhaps it was an act of fate, then, that Mills’ first grandchild, Jerome, had given her a book, titled Write Your Story, during her 2006 Christmas visit with eldest daughter Michelle in Bristol, England. It was meant to record her legacy.

The inscription read: “Granny, I look forward very much to reading all that you decide to commit to our family heritage, Love Jerome.” She granted Jerome’s wishes in her Byline.