Justine Henzell, co-founder and producer of the Calabash Literary Competition, claimed she is deeply saddened by the death of Ralph Thompson, whom she credits as a single of the 1st to go through at the inaugural staging of Calabash.
The Jamaican poet, businessman and educator died on Sunday, January 23. He was 93 years aged.
“In 2001, when we started, Calabash was an unfamiliar competition. The folks that arrived did, so in faith, and they trustworthy us that it would be a very good event. Ralph Thompson was one of people people today who trustworthy us,” Henzell reported.
In conveying condolences to Thompson’s family members and those near to Thompson, Henzell explained he was foremost a poet and mate.
“He was a massive supporter of the literary and visible arts. He produced the journey to Calabash for as quite a few as he could. He was one particular of all those individuals that held Jamaica in higher regard,” she said.
Thompson was born in the United States in 1928 nevertheless, his loved ones on his mother’s facet goes back again 3 generations in Jamaica.
Thompson’s education and learning was intensely motivated by the Jesuits by large college in Jamaica and college in The us. Immediately after earning his Health practitioner of Law degree at Fordham College in New York, he served for two decades as an officer in the United States Air Force in Japan, soon after which he returned to Jamaica and started his occupation as a businessman, painter and poet.
He has offered public provider beneath each political administrations in Jamaica and was invested into the Get of Difference in 1988 in the rank of commander. He was also a standard broadcaster and panellist on Jamaican radio and contributor to Jamaica’s press.
Around the decades, he has worn a lot of hats. He was a pioneer for early-childhood education and advocated for the Early Childhood Commission for in excess of 20 many years. Thompson was also a previous chief executive officer of one of Jamaica’s greatest manufacturing firms, Seprod Minimal, from 1992 to 1999. He was an integral element of the team that saved the firm from personal bankruptcy.
Thompson served as a director for T. Geddes Grant (Distributors) Limited and as a director of many entities in just the Musson Group of Businesses. He was also a non–executive director of Normal Incident Insurance policy Corporation Confined.
During his business job, poetry has been buying Thompson’s passions in his everyday living. He is finest recognised as an internationally renowned poet and painter. He has revealed additional than 20 poems in British, American and Caribbean journals, together with The Caribbean Author and the Mississippi Critique.
His do the job is also reproduced in The Heinemann E-book of Caribbean Poetry (1992), A Globe of Poetry for CXC (1994), various Observer Arts Journal anthologies, The Oxford Guide of Caribbean Verse (2005), and Writers Who Paint, Painters Who Produce (2007).
“He was not only included in the artwork community, but also incredibly energetic in the organization community. He was a poet and an artist that touched diverse sections of two worlds. He sat in the two worlds, and he did so comfortably,” Henzell reported.