Remembrance

Adrian Robinson

Oliver was a great guy, I thought. As head of The Gleaner, I think he did a wonderful job over the period when he ran it.

He was just a wonderful person to be with. We had many lunches together down at The Gleaner and I found him to be a wonderful host. He was just a gentleman overall, and while we were not close enough for me to share a specific memory, I can say that when he hosted those lunches I enjoyed his company and he seemed to enjoy mine.

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Robert McMillan of McMillan Advertising says he loved Oliver Clarke and they shared a passion.

I considered it a great privilege to be a friend of Oliver Clarke. He was a man of great intellect, great influence, and surprisingly to many, a man who had a tremendous sense of humour which was dry but notwithstanding always insightful.

He did not suffer fools gladly and he was absolutely fearless in his assessment of people no matter what their rank.

We shared a great common interest in gardening, which most people found surprising. They would see us huddled in a corner at some function, heads together chatting, and curiosity would overcome them and they would come and ask what we were plotting, and I said you would not believe it but we were talking about plants that he was very passionately interested in, and we shared a great interest in rare trees, and we had a sort of a rivalry to see who could get hold of the most exotic.

He had a tree called a tree tomato, which grew as a tree but bore tomatoes. He had Venus fly traps which would actively catch insects and consume them. He was in England once and I begged him to get an African tree which I wanted, called a Marula, and he obliged me with not one but two because, he told me, you had to have a male and female.

I loved the man.

I loved him for his smile.

I loved him for his intellectual capacity.

I loved him for his fearlessness.

I shall miss him.

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Arnold Foote

The words are hard to come right now as there is so much emotion on hearing of the death of my friend the patriot.

He was a great man who did a lot for Jamaica and the Jamaican people. The work he did to build the advertising and media industries in Jamaica and the wider Caribbean is worthy of the greatest praise.

I shall miss my friend. May he be long remembered and rightfully revered.