Veteran journalist Anne Hilton laid to rest
But vocalist David Huggins and keyboardist Yohan Chuckaree filled the church with glorious celestial sounds that would have made Hilton smile all the way to heaven.
Hilton passed away last Sunday after ailing for the past two and a half years, first from a bout of both dengue and Chic V and whilst recovering, having fell and broke her hip, a series of operations that led her to be bedridden.
Her son Alexander Hilton, during the eulogy, described his mother as loving and strong willed, sometimes with a sharp tongue, but who showed great personal integrity, being very clear about what was right and wrong.
Speaking on behalf of his sister Penny and himself, Hilton said: “She set the two of us a strong example, and helped us become the man and woman we are today and we shall always remember her as a lady with incredible conviction in everything she did which made her an icon for many, and unpopular by some.” He recalled as a teenager when dinner one night was interrupted at their house by a phone call that got his mother very upset when an unknown caller warned her to desist from writing any further articles on the quarrying or her family would be killed.
He said: “My father comforted her and from then she turned her attention to food, health and books. She wrote about food, in an accessible and reader-friendly way, she showed a generation how to make jams, mayonnaise and marmalades, and she showed us how to enjoy good food, and she loved to eat it too.” Hilton won numerous awards from PAHO, Excellence in Journalism and many others.
But more than that, Alexander said she won a devoted following among the readers and listeners.
She was a member as well as president of the UK Women’s Club, and a keen member of the Field Naturalists Club. Anne Hilton was born in 1929, a year of great turmoil, said Alexander.
Her father was a sports editor of the Daily Express in London at the time. Alexander said those growing up years with his mom’s Helen in Essex, were not easy years, as there were hardships, rations and shortages at the time of the Second World War.
Hilton left England for an overseas posting in Belize then Colombia.
Some time later Alexander said she crossed the Atlantic by ship, and she and John met halfway and married in Jamaica. “Then they went to Colombia where three things happened which changed her life. The first two, she adopted my sister Penny in Medellin and myself in Bogota as she was unable to have children after getting Tuberculosis in France many years earlier, and the third, she launched her career in journalism.
– A bomb exploded in Bogota at the start of a civil war. Her father Harold telephoned from London and asked her for a news story for the Express. She conveyed the drama and horror of the event for readers in England,” said Alexander of the launch of Hilton’s journalism career.
Hilton came to Trinidad 1964 and continued her journalism, starting with two- minute commentaries for Radio 95. Says one of her colleagues from that time: “Anne was at every Trinidad Theatre Workshop play and every exhibition and every party.” Alexander said his mother had a way of trying to provoke a reaction with a sort of: ‘it might be a good idea if…Hmmm?’, a little lifting of the voice and a big patrician puff of the cigarette.
Many in the congregation smiled.
“She wrote for the Express first, then the Guardian, and went across to Newsday with Therese Mills and remained there,” said Alexander who stated that his mother’s great sadness in 1998, came with the loss of her devoted husband John.
“She threw herself into working for Newsday, where she kept going right up into her 80s.
She was a fixture of the diplomatic circuit. No National Day was complete without Anne, and her close friends of 50 years, Cherry Araujo.” A private cremation was held for Hilton following the church service.